


endless summer afternoon

by SecretReyloTrash (BadOldWest)



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, And now Ben's home and Rey is just Goldilocks-ing-out, Angst and Smut, Bedsharing, Blowjobs, Cunnilingus, Dirty Talk, F/M, Han offer homeless Rey a place to stay, Kylo returning from rehab, Masturbation, Pool Sex, Recreational Drug Use, Rey develops a crush on Ben from afar, Secret Relationship, Sneaking Around, Stoned Sex, adopted-sister-Rey-vibes, followed immediately by friendship-building run to CVS for the morning after pill, hammock sex, in Ben's Bed, responsible recreational drug use, sober kylo babysits, tw: mention of past addiction, unprotected sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-29
Updated: 2018-12-25
Packaged: 2019-06-18 00:27:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 61,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15473460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BadOldWest/pseuds/SecretReyloTrash
Summary: “My son's room is always made up,” Han had said, hitting a light switch as Rey clung to a dirty backpack in the dark hallway, “he never comes home. Warm bed might as well get some use.”Rey spared Han some of the dignity of his own longing assessment of the space that clearly hadn’t been looked at in a long time. An empty room in a quiet house. As gruff as he was, handing it off to some runaway nobody just because she was helping him rebuild a car was one of the kindest gestures she’d ever experienced, and had a hidden weight that she knew needed a respectful amount of privacy. Mysteries were often about unresolved sadness, and were usually only solved by the people who didn’t feel it.Rey is offered a place to stay: a spare bedroom once belonging to the mysterious Ben Solo. What does she do when she wakes up with him wanting his bed back?





	1. I wish I believed you when you told me this was my home

**Author's Note:**

> Hey all! This story isn't really about addiction but it does feature a Kylo who is in recovery that I have no plans of writing a relapse for; if mentions of that are still triggering to you that's for you to determine but I'm not really "going there" thematically or making a story about overcoming addiction, just as backstory and to color some character interactions from the perspective of someone recently sober. I know I have a reputation for digging in way too deep on painful subject matter so don't worry, this is mostly a bottle story of a homeless Rey being offered a job and a place to stay by Han, and Kylo moving back home and Rey is kind of into Ben from his lingering presence in his room that she's living in and stuff...happens because of that seed planted by staying in his bed. I'm not going to go crazy this time. I swear. Seriously. I promise.
> 
> Also, reposting because apparently drafts go to the timestamp of when you created the draft; so Ao3 posted this to the tags of three days ago. Fml.

“My son's room is always made up,” Han had said, hitting a light switch as Rey clung to a dirty backpack in the dark hallway, “he never comes home. Warm bed might as well get some use.”

Rey spared Han some of the dignity of his own longing assessment of the space that clearly hadn’t been looked at in a long time. An empty room in a quiet house. As gruff as he was, handing it off to some runaway nobody just because she was helping him rebuild a car was one of the kindest gestures she’d ever experienced, and had a hidden weight that she knew needed a respectful amount of privacy. Mysteries were often about unresolved sadness, and were usually only solved by the people who didn’t feel it. 

So she didn’t ask about the missing son when Han handed her a ratty set of towels and sheets, the kind of thing a man living alone doesn’t think to replace even in the house he once shared with a family. It doesn’t suit a bachelor pad, even the dog, Chewie, rarely leaving the kitchen as if reserving his range for the most functional rooms to prevent bumping into ghosts in the ones deemed unnecessary. 

It would be an inappropriate offer from anyone but Han, who had given her a job in his garage back when while he was reclaiming the lost, discontinued model of car from his youth, he found Rey sleeping in it in a dump two hours from his house. 

_“Do you know how it runs?” Han had wondered aloud, slightly impressed, because she had hot-wired the radio to work. This was a trick question; it only barely did in its prime, a factory-recall he had narrowly escaped many of attempts of reclamation from the manufacturer.  
_

_Rey had not successfully contained her glee._

_“I lived in it for two months. I know everything about it.”_

“Thank you,” Rey mumbled. Her face was more cautiously happy that it was when he offered her the job even with Chewie nudging her hip with his nose, dancing in a circle in the crisply empty room neither she nor Han had stepped into yet. 

“Well, I kind of stole your home.”

Han shrugged, placing his hand casually on a shelf above the bed. It knocked against a trophy lined up on display, his hand withdrew and his face twisted up in a reaction that made Rey honestly fearful that she was staying in the room of a dead child. 

“I don’t mind sleeping in the garage, that couch at least has less mileage than the Falcon.”

Han looked down at the pristine carpet, vacuum lines defined in perfect straight lanes.

"Wouldn't be so sure about that," he joked, but it lacked mirth.

Rey’s eye flickered around, but it was nondescript beyond it’s masculine style. Gray sheets. The lamp on the night table cast red light instead of the more clinical white overhead. Dressers and desk devoid of any telling knick-knacks, even embarrassing hobbies. 

It wasn’t made up like the kid was taken and the parents didn’t have the heart to alter anything, like he’d make the rounds on some milk cartons and be carried home by the right good samaritan calling the cops while the kid was spotted at a Friendly’s with his captor. It was made up for someone alive, not even  _vaguely_  alive, who just wasn’t coming back but with the winsome nature of a parent not ready to turn it into a craft room or a home gym. Not that Han was the guy in need of either of those things. But the room longed for someone, to the point that Rey apologized to the universe before she slid into the spot obviously waiting to be filled by someone else.

His scent comforted to the point that seemingly impossible sleep claimed her.

* * *

“What was your son’s name?”

There had been no clues of this anywhere in the room. The crap Rey saw in movies, the set dressing, the things she assumed kids who had homes had parents to slap up on all the walls. Participation certificates, photographs, art projects made by squirming fingers. 

Han nearly choked on his coffee, fiddling with the compressor. They had a running joke that the compressor was shy, was working some kind of secret transformation under the hood while they weren’t watching. And every morning it would still be useless, unchanged, struck with stage fright to make the magic happen. Time ran in an aimless cycle, the kind where days of the week stop mattering, like they often do in summer. It was when light mattered the most when determining what part of the day it was.

“Ben,” he said gravely. Chewie, from his spot on the couch, lifted his head and wagged at the name, as if someone was walking through the door. The gray on his muzzle looked eerily human. Tired. 

Rey's ears flushed as she fiddled with a wire coupling. 

"Is he dead?"

Han shook his head. "Just doesn't want to come home. Little over thirty."

Information from Han felt like cheating, so she didn't ask any more questions. 

Rey did find a sketchbook in the room. In it were the dark lines one someone fond of inks; sketches of graceful hands she immediately recognized as Han’s, if a good deal younger. Boys with black eyes and girls who are a little too perfect in their fine lines. In the way that boys who do not yet know women think girls can be; virtuous saviors. Their tight breasts caressed by a lush mouth, big, rough hands on their little bodies. Something monstrous in their touch.

She could see the hands of the person who drew them, careful hands, sometimes too aggressive. Hands for eyes that saw nightmares, saw demons. 

She had not pictured Han’s son as  _dark._  Not when she slept in his bed, touched the soft fabrics of the clothing lurking in those drawers. A lot of sweaters, when she was alone in the room she caved one night over the always-blasting AC and shrugged on a gray one, so large on her she had to wrap it taut to keep it from drifting down her shoulders, sleeves blanketing over her hands. She felt contained inside it, not fitting but protected. 

Her hands investigated so many objects without words, because an object without writing or context was just another mystery. The questions it prompted were better than the answers. 

It devastated her, this window into this person. So much so she asked for the name. 

Ben, if like his father, Ben Solo. 

She tried out the name, trapped in a room that smelled like him, her own scent curdling sour if mixed in with the things that had not changed in many years. She didn’t fit, the mattress never caved under her spine like she was a nestling creature. Like the room was trying to shrug her off in favor of waiting another ten years. 

Defiantly, she took the room back from the mystery of Ben Solo.

She thought of heavy lines and feathery black hair as she, in rebellion, squirmed a hand between her legs and dared Ben to reclaim the bed she christened with an orgasm. Her hips bounced as she rode her hand, feeling watched, hooked to this tension, attached to Ben in a way she never felt before. Ben was a challenge and a dare. She wanted Ben here, kicking her out of his bed, punishing her,  _joining_  her. This faceless mystery, recipient of her pity, object of her loathing. She felt a lot of things for him that he'd never know, sneaky, something she relished getting away with. 

Because she wasn't sure, in the weeks she had spent as Han's assistant, which one of them belonged there more. Or if they didn't belong just that same amount.

Her climax was hard and impactful, drumming up more shame than anything else when her hard nipples dragged against the sheets when she was done, how hard her heart was beating, the smell of her teased across Ben’s bed. The muscles of her stomach jumped, her thighs shook, all of her seemed possessed because she didn't have a bed to do this in...maybe ever. She flopped into the pillow that smelled like someone else and breathed it in as she tried to keep quiet. 

It still smelled like him when she woke in the morning. So much she could have sworn she felt a face watching her from the cool side of the pillow, sharing the bed. 

Rey left little impact wherever she went. It was the habits of years spent homeless. She prayed that this would not change this time around. She didn’t want to walk into a ghost. 

* * *

It was too late. 

Han urged her to use to pool, and when she caught him waking up early on a Saturday, his only day off, to whisk away all the leaves and murky things in the water that had gone unclean for so long, she was obligated. She slipped into a pair of basketball shorts and a tee shirt and dipped her legs in, but the water was too tempting and Han seemed too sad to not oblige. 

She took the cautious swim of someone who didn’t know how, never learned, bouncing on her tiptoes in the shallow end as Chewie raced laps around the edge and dove in beside her from all sides. Han cleaned off a rusty but impressive grill at the corner of the patio as she swam and then there were burgers leaking with red juice and corn and an impressively finagled clambake by sundown. 

There was a somewhat empty pantry that seemed to fill instead of dwindle every day. This wasn't camping anymore if she was gaining an appropriate amount of weight, if she wandered into the kitchen knowing a meal was coming, if she didn't devour an entire box of Cheerios when left alone in the house like she did the first week she was there. Han wasn't a great cook, but there was a protein, a vegetable, and something fatty as an option three square meals a day. 

There was a state-of-the-art rec room, where she wandered into and Han found her. She observed the wall of DVDs. Han carefully sipped from a beer and chuckled at any title she pointed to. 

“Seen it?”

He’d ask, continually. 

She’d shake her head. 

He caved at  _Ghostbusters._

“You  _have_  to see that one,” he pulled it off the shelf, a dam broken, and she and Han and Chewie picked a movie a night; further illuminating a part of the house that had been long closed off. 

She understood almost immediately why he made her the offer to move out of his garage and into the house; he was as suited to this suburban neighborhood and empty house as she was. This was both their effort to try and fill the absence. 

* * *

She found a pamphlet for a rehab center in the center console of the Falcon. Proudly but tastefully advertising a visitor’s day. The green paper seemed to imply a hushed tone of personal shame.

Han rarely made himself scarce from the house but to buy groceries or auto parts, seeming to enjoy to companionship for errands so Chewie and Rey always had the unspoken invitation to tag along and always took it. They’d eat fast food and stick to visual observations out the windows of passerbyes like a judgmental version of eye spy. Or they would quote the movies they watched; not discuss but  _quote_ , summarize, relive. Han had a penchant for thinking everything Bill Murray ever said was funny. Rey found this to be a Dad Quality, one that she also agreed with. Mostly they were quiet, but it was comforting in the passenger seat. She felt trusted there, in the companionable silence. Like a copilot. 

She slammed the console shut, somehow knowing that the Sunday he had peeled off from the shop early was to go there.

Homelessness made her no stranger to the plight of addiction, so what did hurt her was the shock of familiarity. That even off the streets, with a room and a house and a dad to clean the pool and grill and watch movies with, it wasn’t enough. 

She took Ben’s place and she was glad for it to the point that some nights she lay awake and hated him for leaving this behind.

But she still fell asleep the same way, wondering about him, with her hand working between her legs.

Because Rey had always assumed it was everything, and in having it now was feeling like it was everything. But when it became the place you belonged, it could sometimes still not be enough, and that terrified her. 

* * *

Rey  _had things_  now. 

She had a new pair of jeans, leggings, sneakers, and a tee shirt for every day of the week. A sweater, a bathing suit, and a jacket. A dress she had yet to wear. Hair ties instead of rubber bands that ripped out strands when she pulled them loose. A cheap little purse and a wallet and  _socks_ , she never imagined how good a new pair of socks could feel. 

Han somewhat sheepishly delivered the goods, with her merely nodding at things he pointed out in the aisles of Target, not asking but not refusing his offer for  _how about that?_

He’d been paying her probably well below minimum wage and very much off the books, but he also gave her a place to stay. He didn’t seem to want to convert her to on-the-grid, which she appreciated. She would figure that out on her own; unforced. 

Rey felt like her own doll with her new things; her little accessories, her assembly of personhood. She had enough to blend in and not feel like  _less_  in a normal setting. She smiled when she thought of going on a date with a boy her age, knowing for once she had a dress and a purse and a car she could borrow and a place to go home to where someone gave a shit if she came back at a reasonable hour. The kind of suburban completeness she had always dreamed about.

She spent the first week's pay on underwear, something she didn't subject Han to by sending him on a ghost chase for an auto part that had been out of commission since the seventies, and her hands were shaking around the bag of something she bought for herself when she walked back to the house. A cheap pack of a dozen black pairs, and three nice, colorful pairs. Because it was addictive, having things. She thought it would be enough, but while she hoarded over her treasures there was the unfolding of needing something else as well. Now that she had settled the issue of shoes that weren't falling apart, she was tired of pulling on ripped underwear when she got dressed. Now that she was fed, she needed a wallet for the money she was earning. 

She also had a tool box, gifted during a grueling trip to Home Depot and Lowes and back again in search of an exact part that neither of the three locations had. Han presented her with the fully stocked toolbox when they got back to the car. She spent the night too scared to ever use them, only brushing her fingers along them with a fascinated, tentative smile.

Other than Ben's room, everything Han had given her was  _new,_  and when she sank into Ben's bed every night, she was reminded that she was there to replace something. 

* * *

Ben’s large body blanketed her, her shoulders and legs, pressing her onto her stomach into the bed. She accepted the weight, caved under it, the rumbling  _“you’re in my bed”_  coaxed under her jaw. Teasing, Ben in her fantasies was always glad to find her there. Her limbs splayed out lazily; she was limp but she wasn’t going to move. At a territory war over this space. It was odd how she’d gone from unwillingly to leave a dent in it to making claw marks in her wake on the way out. She eroticized her terror of being removed. Lay in bed beside her fear. Gave it her pleasure. 

A faceless presence of  _Ben_  laughed in her ear, lips then dragged against the base of her neck, his hands coming around her hips. Squeezing until her insides clenched.

_“We can share.”_

She woke up with a dry mouth and Chewie curled at her feet on the bed. 

Rey couldn’t look Han in the eyes when he hand her the breakfast he’d made her that morning, neither of them able to talk about Ben. 

* * *

Rey’s hardened heart made a friend; a student at the local university in need of help for a robotics project. His robot, affectionately named BB8, was left in his care when his lab partner took ill for the remainder of the semester, and that final was coming with Finn being deeply unprepared to do it on his own. He had wandered in with the address printed and a hopeless look on his face, asking for help. Rey was good with her hands, so she helped Finn along the way in the garage, Han rolling his eyes as they laughed over circuits. 

Rey finally felt like she had a job, a routine, that filled her days. Working on the Falcon with Han and helping Finn with his project after his classes and watching movies at the house. 

Han didn’t get a lot of customers, and most were old friends or vaguely threatening former acquaintances, so it wasn’t unusual for him to be scarce in the back when people arrived. She was wiping motor oil from her hands onto her coveralls when she almost collided with an impossibly tall man dressed in black.

“Sorry,” she sputtered, jumping back. He looked disdainfully down at her, his eyes cast back quickly to someone behind him, a pissy looking ginger. 

“Is Solo here?”

The man in black exuded a defined presence, but there was something about the two men...the redhead had the power in this scenario, and he was left pacing around waiting for permission from him, or something. His friend's body blocking the door made it obvious that he was not permitted to leave the garage with the ginger’s approval.

“And...you are...?”

She’d had to pretend Han was dead last week to two guys who definitely had guns, so she was pretty well versed in this routine. This was probably why Han and her got along so well. She did things off the books too. 

“Kylo Ren,” he replied crisply, his tone annoyed. The redhead smirked and nodded at Rey. 

“We have a lunch meeting with him, some paperwork to fill out. Tell him Hux is here with Kylo.”

Rey did so, calling up at the base of the stairs to Han’s office. Han said he’d be down in a minute.

She returned to the table, her screwdriver poised over BB’s circuits. Kylo drew near, resting his arms on the table across from her. His neck was chorded with visible tension, it made her jump back. A scar knotted down the side of his face, and she felt it was rude to stare, so she looked down. His black henley had the sleeves pushed up to his elbows. She stared at his wrists. Graceful hands, if a little fidgety. 

“You’re his new rescue, then?”

There was a sneer on his lips. Rey straightened and looked into dark eyes. They seemed impossibly broken, the kind of leveraging eyes of someone who got what they wanted and wasn’t satisfied. 

As though she cared about satisfying him.

“Han offered me a job,” she answered evenly, “though I don’t see how that’s your business.”

There was a look in his eyes that implied something that made her skin crawled. A flush fanned up her chest. It wasn't like that, she couldn't even put to words how it never felt like that, Han was just lonely and missed his son and she had needed help and they felt kindred. That this was for the best for everybody. That they were all getting better. 

Kylo was still smirking at her as Han thundered down the stairs, declaring that he could have come over the facility to sign this stuff. 

“How else do we re-acclimate me?” Kylo had a princely tone about it that set Rey’s teeth on edge. Hux still hovered in the doorway a moment too long, emphasizing that it was with his allowance Kylo could leave, something that made that dark-haired man’s shoulders slump. Kylo's brow twitched as his face visibly darkened. Rey savored the subtle take-down. 

Han glanced at her before soberly walking to his car. 

“Keep the place from falling apart.”

That was the last Rey heard of any of it. 

* * *

The house finally felt familiar when Han got the call. She heard the echo of the voice from the other side of the phone. She and Han had been drinking beers, tossing popcorn for Chewie to catch in his mouth. The caller ID made him go white and the voice on the other end even whiter. The greetings were muffled, abrupt.

_“I swear to God Han, this is important.”_

“I’m not saying it isn’t, and he will  _always_  have a place here-”

_“Do you know how essential this transition period to him? If he comes home and finds his bed has been given up to some twenty-year-old stranger, so help me-”_

“I at least have a place for him to stay. Is he going to campaign on the road with you, living out of hotel rooms in cities he’s never been to, getting babysat to the point he relapses out of spite because he resents it so much?”

Han turned on his heel as his voice rose, taking most of this call hunched over the sink. His eyes flashed guiltily when they landed on Rey.

Rey began packing her backpack that night. She couldn't take all of it, which was something she tried not to think about. She thought about trying to find somewhere else to sleep. This was bigger than solving her problem. This was the solution to her problem being the detriment to everyone else’s.

She tried to sneak out. There was the flare of sound from the rec room. She thought Han might have been asleep, though Chewie lulled, barking in the back of his throat. She panicked, trying to silence the dog. But Han was awake.

The tv flickered with the home videos he was watching, a few beers in, his breath sour and his head rocking to sleep.

“Could never understand it,” Han swallowed thickly. 

Rey looked to the screen.  _He couldn’t have been twenty yet, but he dismounts a motorbike with a practiced ease in the driveway of this house, a younger Han clapping him on the back. Ben sheds his helmet._  She’d already slept in his bed and memorized his smell, draped some of his clothes around her body in the middle of the night. But she never saw his face until that moment.

Except she had. 

She held back the gasp when  _Kylo_  popped out from under that helmet, looking a little less angry and a little more hopeful. It was before the scar.

_His smile is careful and cautious, his eyes intense and avoiding the camera’s lens. But it’s Ben. And it’s Kylo. He’s serious where Han was casual, sincere where his father was sarcastic. His gloved hands nervously drum the seat of the bike as a woman, holding the camera, asks him how he likes it, a birthday gift, clearly chosen by people who knew him, who loved him a lot._

"When he came by..."

Han shrugged. "Rehab center wants to give him monitored doses of freedom, so his release isn't overwhelming or something, so they brought him to sign his release stuff over lunch because I'm the relative that's supposed to keep him on the wagon. It's a fancy place, doesn't really want to treat people like they're junkies, my wife found it for him."

"You'd better get rid of those beers, then," Rey tried to keep judgment from her voice. It didn't work.

"That's what tonight is for," Han slurred, and Rey had to close her eyes to spare him having her know the details of his lowest point. She wanted to help Han. So she drank two beers, and they finished the six pack in silence until the tape ran out, an empty blue screen filling the room with cold light. 

She thought about the last image on the screen.

 _Ben looks right into the camera when his mother barks out a laugh. His smile is shy._  If Rey had never met Kylo, she'd be in love with that smile.

Rey couldn’t hate Ben. But she couldn’t look at this and feel anything but pain that everything she ever wanted still wasn’t enough.

Rey didn’t leave the room until the video was finished, until Han fell asleep, until she could climb back into Ben’s bed with her packed bag abandoned on the floor.

* * *

She was running from Kylo in her dream.

It was down the hill near the dump Han had found her, and he and Hux kept...collecting her body into their arms to carry her away, and she’d force herself free and tumble further into the snow. When she’d finally gotten enough of a head start, she flattened herself under the snow, letting it cover her, and waited for them to pass. 

After a few serene moments surrounded by white, under the blanket of snow, she rolled on her side and found herself face-to-face with Kylo. Lying beside her in all the white, like he was under the sheets with her. His smile was tentative, but mixed with the knowing sharpness from the man in the shop the other day. 

She woke up when the drawer closest to her head slammed shut. 

Rey started under the covers, her tank top bunched up over her stomach, and wrestled her way out of the gray comforter. 

And just like moments before, he sent her a cold assessing expression. 

“Don’t get up. You’re my guest.”

Rey tried to take deep breaths, but it was hard after just waking up in her underwear in front of a stranger and with no bra on. 

“Sorry,” she attempted to drag the blankets up over her breasts. Ben smirked. Kylo smirked. This was going to be confusing. 

He knelt by the dresser beside the bed, eye level with her. This didn't make her feel any less intimidated. 

“I’m just in shock that the excuse Solo fed my mother about you crashing in my room wasn’t a load of bullshit. Thought I'd really find you in bed with him,” Kylo,  _she now knew to call him Kylo,_  tossed a stack of shirts into a laundry basket at his side. He rummaged through more of the lower drawers for his clothing. “I assume he’s like the father you never had? Prepare to be disappointed.”

Rey’s throat closed, and she slid onto her back and stared up at the ceiling. He was in recovery, she couldn’t engage. This much Han had at least...implied. That he picked fights he thought he could win.

She was still slightly dazed by the dream when he crouched by her side. Her hips twisted away defensively. He had those cold eyes locked on her. 

“I can’t imagine the last time someone came in that bed,” he told her honestly, the amusement in his eyes so cruel and cutting that she gasped a little bit. 

His hand locked around her wrist, dragging her fingers under his nose. She shut her eyes tight as he inhaled her smell. His eyes fluttered shut. She yanked her hand away when his tongue flattened against her fingertip, a laugh pressed to the sensitive skin.

“Is that how you deal with it?” his tone is disgustingly ponderous, “the loneliness? Is it unbearable, lying awake at night...?”

Moments before she was secretly begging for Han to come break it up, but she had to keep him away from  _this._  This was beyond humiliating, Kylo leering at her, her own inability to get her bearings and adjust the straps over her shoulders  _without her breasts spilling out in all directions._

Ben was home. Ben had returned to his room. This was something she had anticipated and dreaded for months.

"...At least this means you aren't fucking my dad-"

“And how did you fucking cope?” she finally snapped back. He reeled his weight onto his heels, falling back about six inches. “Was it drinking, or something heavier? How did you fuck up your life?”

The scarred side of his face turned away. Like a flinch.

Rey cut to the fucking bone, and even she knew it. The anger she tried to hide, tried to mask with smiles and sarcasm and keeping busy. It was what made her and Han kindred. Kylo blinked at her. As angry as she was, she was in  _his_  bedroom and he had  _just_  gotten out of rehab. Jesus. She felt like shit.

“You can have your room back,” she dragged the blanket up and around her shoulders. “Your father had it waiting for you for  _years.”_

She withdrew everything from her one drawer and stormed out into the hallway, slamming the door behind her. 

* * *

She couldn’t leave; she left the toolbox in Ben’s room. No matter what she would never leave this house without it.

Han’s tone was  _pissed_  when he found her out in the hallway with her stack of belongings. 

_“Did he kick you out of your room?”_

Even she knew it was more complicated than that. She could practically feel Kylo wince on the other side of the door.

“It’s better this way,” she shrugged off his hand on her shoulder. “I’ll crash in the rec room. You're going through some family stuff. It’s not a big deal.”

Han had a bad back, or she knew he would have offered up his room. She had to stop him from even bringing it up. She shook her head when Han tried to argue. Kylo was already muttering to himself, clearly stripping the sheets from his bed.

Rey hoped her sweat from the night before had dried, the lingering smell of-

_Okay it had always helped her fall asleep._

Han was silent as he helped her set up a bed on the pull-out couch in the rec room. 

* * *

Despite the chaotic introduction, a stand-off was formed. 

Dinner was mandatory. All three of them had to sit together and deal with it. Rey and Han begrudgingly talked shop, Han and Kylo begrudgingly tried to talk, period, Rey and Kylo didn’t talk at all. 

Kylo cooked the vegetable for every meal, because he took one look at the canned green beans Han heated up the first night and recoiled. 

"You've been  _boiling_  her vegetables and making her eat it with no seasoning? Do you hate her?"

 _"I'm sitting right here,"_  she grit out, but the green beans did taste like mush the moment after.

Rey was annoyed by the outburst at first, but after some fried brussel sprouts with honey and Sriracha and fresh asparagus with brown butter, she was converted. Han surrendered the vegetable duties to Kylo, who didn't seem to want them once he got them, but did cook a damn good side dish every time.

"Where'd you learn to cook?" Han had asked gruffly, eating more of a vegetable than Rey had ever seen him. 

Kylo shrugged, staring at his plate. "A lot happens in ten years. Also the food in rehab is shit, so you learn to miss the effort of cooking."

It was the first time the R word had been dropped in conversation. Rey stuffed a biscuit into her mouth to keep anyone from trying to turn the conversation to her. 

Days were still the shop and errands and diners and calm. The father she never had. Kylo went to meetings with his sponsor, applied for jobs, went to museums and movies or the gym and reported little of his day. Han had informed her that any sign of Kylo relapsing meant he was  _out._  Which put her in the awkward position that Han wanted his somewhat-adopted visitor to rat out his own son. No matter how used to using the remotes or comfortable she was sleeping there, she didn't think she felt that welcome. Rey did not question what Kylo did to end up in rehab, or estranged, or on such thin ice. But knowing how forgiving Han was with her: it had to be pretty bad. 

"He's sick," Han once murmured, unprompted, while checking the still un-transformed compressor. "I know that he's sick and it's not his fault. But when you spend ten years trying to help and he doesn't let you...it's hard."

"Was he an addict for ten years?" 

If Kylo was, he looked  _great._  Maybe some dark circles, some chorded veins, but he hadn't reduced body mass or gotten wiry and mean like the people she avoided on the streets or in shelters. 

Han shook his head. "I think this was the final breakdown of a lot of problems. He was always a troubled kid, but he left a decade ago and if he's still screwed up about a relatively normal childhood now, well, don't know what to say to that. I think it's who he took up with in those ten years. My ex made me bring him home from the city about a year ago at his lowest and he's been in and out of treatment. This is kind of the last lap, since the accident."

Rey had the sense to not ask about the accident, but the scar across Kylo's face seemed to tell her enough. 

There was something about him though, that seemed to be too principled for the chemical desires of an addiction. Compulsion, or addictive behavior, she could totally see, medicating depression, absolutely. There were sharp edges to the guy, in the ways he muttered to himself or was very, very careful with his hands and body. Nobody was allowed in the kitchen if he was doing something, his temper flared in exemplary fashion when the stove was on or he was on a timer. Control had to be a huge issue for someone like him, Hux driving him out for one lunch to sign paperwork for his release with his father and no one allowing him a moment alone must have sent some pretty strong messages about if it was worth it or not to lose control again. The overhanging threat of returning to rehab kept him checking in on time, collecting his sobriety chips, following house rules. 

Nights had dinner and then Rey and Han watched a movie. It meant having to remake up her bed on the sofa afterwards, but she didn’t mind. 

Kylo joined in for the first time for Zombieland. Just hovering, after Han’s laughing at Bill Murray’s cameo startled him out of his room. Han had stopped breathing he was laughing so hard, at one point.

Kylo didn't sit down with them, even though Chewie perked up and lifted himself to clear a spot for him. But he stood for about thirty minutes of the movie, arms crossed, his face a mask but he nodded towards the screen whenever his father laughed. 

One thing that did startle her was that Han smelled like beer, not Kylo. She knew there was a six pack in the garage that was locked up in the office. She just hadn't expected Han to go near it with Kylo in the house. 

"Took Ben to see this for his birthday when it came out," Han informed her. He had yet to call him Kylo. Rey did observe that this infuriated him. 

"Yeah..." 

And Ben drifted his way back to his room. 

The ghost was clearly back in the house. 

* * *

Sleeping was harder. She didn't realize she missed the cool darkness and sharp angles of his room. She, with her collection of accessories, filled her space in the dollhouse. Now she rattled around in the wrong room, feeling out of place.

There was also the issue of her nightly sleep routine being a little too out in the open for comfort. 

And she once heard Kylo  _taking advantage_  of his privacy. It had to have been the roommate situation at rehab affording him little opportunity. The wall dividing the rec room from his room reverberated with soft sounds of longing. They were kind of romantic, if she didn't have to brush past him to use the shower or pass him the salt at meals every day. With a frustrated sigh, her hand found its way between her legs, wishing she could be back in that bed if only for the Ben she had fantasized about. 

He did walk in on her in the shower once, with her barely enough time to wrap herself in the shower curtain and yell at him. 

"I'm still not used to there being another person in the house,  _fuck,"_  he snapped, not even looking at the dripping wet skin in front of him. He was unimpressed with her outrage. They were so busy yelling it took a solid five minutes until he slammed the door so she could finish showering. 

Rey was a glutton for the mystery now; for Ben in the absence from this scarred man in front of her. For where he was going and what he was feeling and for the pain that had ruptured this family that she was being used as an odd glue to try and hold it together. 

When he was out at the gym one day, she went back into his room and stole a tee shirt of his. Super soft. She fell asleep with it pressed to her nose, trying to think of Ben, not this new one, this Kylo.

* * *

Rey was becoming a better swimmer, but still wasn't great. Han had grimly told her it was best she didn't go in the pool if she was by herself, but she stuck to the shallow end and stayed in the water for hours, like a little kid. Chewie was with her. Sometimes Finn came over and swam, along with his new robotics partner, a girl named Rose, who had been helping out around the shop. Rey liked them both and their molasses-slow steps towards romance. Encouraged them to go out without her, urging them into things that didn't seem like dates. 

One afternoon in late summer, she was attempting laps in the most pitiful of doggy-paddles, and nearly sank to the bottom of the pool when she turned to see Kylo lowering himself to a chaise lounge, not lying on it, but perched at the end, watching her. 

"You cannot be serious. Are you drowning?"

Rey snorted, rolling onto her back to float. She sank about six inches into the water and had to flail her way for her to emerge. She hopped on one foot, now safely supported. 

"Relax,  _Ben."_

His nostrils flared. 

"My father instructed me not to let you swim unsupervised."

"You do everything your dad tells you now?"

Her shoulders came up and shrugged above the surface of the water. Kylo looked at her like she was a bug on his skin.

"Where  _is_  your dad?" She dodged, wiping her hair out of her face. She twisted it up in a half-ponytail to keep it out of her eyes. He watched, sort of fascinated. 

"Dinner with my mom. He might not be home tonight."

She briefly wondered why Kylo didn't go, but remembered he was over thirty. And they were probably talking about him, so they'd risk leaving him alone to do it.

_"Oh."_

Han had not disclosed much information about his ex, but she had apparently done a number on him. But Han implied it in a way that made Rey respect her, in that regard.

 _"Not like that,"_  even Kylo looked grossed out. "He thinks if he drinks when I don't see it, he's in the clear. So since my mom is going to chew his ass about letting a strange twenty something with no family  _she has no proof he's not fucking_ stay in our family home while his fuck up son is under this roof. He'll probably get tanked and crash at the garage after."

"Wow."

"I know. We're a messed up family."

"No. That's just the most you've ever talked to me."

Kylo cracked an ironic smile. "You seemed to prefer it that way."

She kicked herself backwards, her posture open underwater. 

"Don't wake me up when I'm half-naked, and maybe I'll surprise you."

"But it's more fun that way," he mused dryly, and Rey felt her skin go hot. She dipped her chin into the water. 

He rolled his eyes in response. "Don't...don't freak out. I'm sorry. It's...hormonal, you're like, all over my bed. I wake up smelling you. It's subconscious."

 _"You changed the sheets,"_  she growled, water splashing her lips because she had all but ducked her head under. 

"Didn't wash you out of them, trust me," he chuckled when she splashed at him. 

He did offer her a real smile, and she took it, squirreled it away, so much like Ben's.

"I felt like I knew you, the first few months," Rey's tongue felt thick, furred. Awkward. Her words stall against her teeth, dropping like bricks. "The same way. It smelled like you. Like any minute you were going to come back."

"Surprised you stayed that long, then."

Rey looked away. He sighed. 

"I have no issue with you being here now that I know what was really going on. I'm sorry I assumed you and my dad were screwing. There was a level to it..." Kylo shook his head. "Basically, when you don't have the best relationship with your father, even when it's your fault, it fucking hurts when he bends over backwards to be a good dad for someone else."

"I can imagine," Rey admitted, glancing back at him. 

They shared a sad smile. Rey's tone lightened. 

"But it means a lot to me, everything he did for me. He's a good guy."

Kylo shrugged. "I'm sure it beats sleeping in a car. Anything would."

Rey flinched, sinking lower in the water. Kylo licked his lips, like he was searching for the right thing to say next. "Look, a dad isn't going to solve all your problems inside. I mean, he was my dad, and I'm still pretty fucked up."

"You weren't home," Rey said icily, "And you had one to go back to, and I never did."

"Look, Han Solo was the one who was always traveling when I was a kid, he was never around, and now that everyone else in this family has moved on he's still here playing house and pretending things are the way it used to be."

Rey stared at the surface of the water, flicking a leaf out of the pool and onto the pavement. Kylo sighed. Chewie loped over to the edge and nudged Rey's shoulder. She scratched the mutt behind his ears, glaring at Kylo. There were tears that she wouldn't let come. But Kylo seemed to sense it. That she had filled a place that didn't exist for him anymore. 

* * *

They still kept a relatively wide berth of each other. Though there was a night where he had wanted to watch something on the tv in the middle of the night, a soccer match airing after midnight, and Han was very annoyed with even the subject being brought up. 

"Look, you have her sleeping in there because she doesn't want to kick you out of the bedroom, so you need to sacrifice this game."

Rey stared at her plate, licked clean of all signs of the roasted cauliflower Kylo had prepared. She cleared her throat. 

"I don't mind. I'll just watch it with him, sleep in a little later the next morning."

"She can just crash in my bed," Kylo told his father stiffly.

 _"I don't mind,"_  she snapped at both men. They looked at her, startled. "Kylo, I happen to  _like_  soccer. Who's playing?"

It wasn't quite settled because she was the one who did it, but she found herself parked on the couch with Kylo, yawning, the next night. She couldn't really picture him as into sports, but soccer was at least fast-paced and arranged somewhat like a battlefield. Maybe this was the only sport he could like.  

Her hair was wet from the shower she took at midnight to try and pad out the evening, and the commentary was in very fast-paced French (Kylo did not explain why he needed to watch this specific commentator but from the way he was nodding, he might actually understand it) so sleep was much closer than she had anticipated.

Kylo's finger threaded into her hair, looping a wet strand around his fingers and tugging down. 

"Here."

 _"What?"_  she snapped awake, trying to be polite. He sighed, examining the texture of her hair between his fingers. He guided her shoulders, resting her head on his leg so she could lie down on the couch. 

He stroked her hair for most of the first half, and her mouth was dry as she felt him combing at her scalp. 

She yawned during the set-up of a penalty.

"Sorry," he whispered as she stiffened. "You can get some sleep. I'll turn it off after this half is over."

But she knew it did matter. He was coiled like a spring, even she knew it was a good game, it was just hard for her to care at two in the morning or if she didn't give a shit about the teams.

"No, stay," she murmured, snuggling his thigh. This she was fine with. He could stay all night. Maybe it was because she was tired. 

Kylo rested a hand on her shoulder. "You don't have to."

Rey shook her head, her eyes fluttering shut. "I want to."

"Rey," his tone was annoyed. "Go sleep in my bed."

"I-"

An orange-toned, trumpet heavy detergent commercial roared on the TV. Kylo took one look at it and pushed her up off of him.

"Go to bed, Rey," he ordered gently, leaning back into the couch with his legs open, taking over the cushions. He went back to ignoring her. She felt like she failed an essential test. 

She hesitated, but sleep won out. She drifted down the hallway and curled up in his bed. It was made the exact same way it was when she had first arrived in it. Hospital corners, sheet she could bounce a quarter off of. And it smelled like him. Guiltily, she snuggled up and fell asleep to the white noise of French yelling and stadium cheers.  

* * *

He took lifeguarding duty very seriously.

Han was out again with some old friends. No one wanted to breech the topic if he should be sober in solidarity to his son. No one saw him crack open a beer, it was never in the house, but Rey hadn't had  _anything_  to drink since Kylo came back. 

So Rey tried to keep him in her sights when Han was gone, and to do that for sure, she swam so he would have to come outside. He usually read or sat in the sun with his eyes closed. He always seemed utterly bored with this chore. She never thought he was even paying the life-saving attention she may have needed, but he would glance up from the chaise occasionally, especially when her foot slipped or she dropped under the water past her ears. 

Kylo rolled his eyes again when she flailed because a bug was in the water. 

"Your form is  _terrible."_

"I'm a new swimmer, fuck you."

She paddled weakly to the shallow end. Chewie had finally stopped running around the edges of the pool like she needed to be rescued when she was in the water. She didn't need someone else pretending she was going to drown at any second. 

_"Enough."_

Kylo shook his head, reaching for the hem of his shirt. He made to lift it up over his chest. Rey dunked herself under the water, panicking when she heard a loud splash at her side. She stayed down in a cannonball position until her lungs nearly burst.

"Had to come up for air eventually."

He was much closer than she had anticipated, his lips hovering over her shoulder. 

"Y-yeah," her teeth chattered. Kylo was in the water. Kylo's hair was dripping into his face. Kylo was standing next to her, soaked, in his underwear. 

She looked at her hands. 

"I just figured," he hooked one of her elbows in his hand, draping an arm of hers over his shoulder, "Just a lap. You obviously want to glide around a little. Let me do something nice for you."

"Why?"

Her arms banded across the base of his throat. He waded, with her draped over his back like a cape, into the deep end, pushing off with a swift glide. 

"Because you gave up a room that was rightfully yours because I was being a brat. And did it again last night."

"Not rightfully mine, I was-"

"Not just because you marked your territory," he rumbled, and she whined and dropped her face in his shoulder. This topic was always casual to him, it hadn't exactly come up again but he had  _smelled her on her own fingers_  the first day he was back in the house, and even now his tone was as light as he was capable of.

"Don't act like you're my big brother one minute and taunt me for...for  _that_  the next."

"Confusing?" Kylo turned his head to look back at her as he swam a few more strokes. "It's that way for me too; my dad finally has the daughter he's always wanted and she's maybe the sexiest little thing I've ever seen."

Han warned her he was going to push her buttons, it was his nature to begin with and the addiction sharpened him when he was missing his fix. 

"Knock it off."

"Why?"

She felt his shoulders flex with the strokes of his arms. He hit the shallow end, cupping her leg to ease the weight she had to hold onto him with less water to float in. "Because I work for your dad."

"Garage doesn't have the strongest HR department for 20-year-olds who don't have a social security number, Rey. And besides," he squeezed her calf, dipping back into the deep end so she did have to  _cling_  to him, "You touched yourself in his son's bed. So you're the one to blame for all this. You came in my bed, I assume  _a lot."_

Breathless, she seemed to forget the edges of the pool were there for her to grab at any point. Her chin rested on his shoulder, hands tight on him.

"I need it to sleep."

He laughed at her pathetic tone. He gripped her arms so she couldn't squirm away. 

"I assume that's been an issue now that you don't have your own room."

"Basically. Through no help from you."

"I think it was suggested that I helped, even when I didn't know I was," he laughed when her knee dug into his side. 

Her bare thighs had to cling to his hips when he went a little faster with the next lap. 

"What'd you think about?"

"You, uh," it was like she was drunk, or someone poured truth serum into her veins. She just wanted to tell him everything. "You coming home and finding me. Letting me share your bed."

"Fuck. I fucked that up."

"You did."

"You probably fell asleep thinking of that before I woke you up and ruined it."

"Uh huh," Rey did laugh, feeling more comfortable holding on to him. She was glad, in the least, he was letting her swim like she'd seen people swim before, better than she ever could. That and this is maybe the naughtiest she had ever felt, in a life of little luxury flirting with a man in a pool on a Sunday afternoon was almost decadent. 

"Did you even know what I looked like?"

"Not for the first few months, but after you came in to the shop-"

He hesitated in the water, grabbing the edge of the diving board to swing them underneath without knocking her head. This drove them slightly deeper under the water, closer together. 

"You didn't know it at the time."

"Your dad was watching some tapes of you when he got back. I realized it was you."

"You," he paused. "Oh. You did that when you  _knew what I looked like?"_

Something about the question tells her that this is important to him. 

"I mean," she groaned, burying her face in his neck again. This time he paused in the water where he could stand, stroking her arms reassuringly. She had to wrap her legs around his waist to not slide off of him, like a koala baby.

"Hey, hey, it's okay. Tell me."

 _"Yeah...?"_  she didn't lift her face, it was burning.

"Rey..." His tone was very serious. "I don't think you understand how hard it was, seeing this little sex-mussed goddess in my bed and not climbing in and helping myself."

"You were still a dick," Rey pointed out, but Kylo shook his head and cleared his throat. 

"I didn't know _-fuck-_ "

Her thighs tightened around his hips. "All you had to do was be nice to me."

Kylo let a sound out that was not unlike a roar, somehow handling her to the front of his body and trapping her against the wall of the pool. She held on for dear life. 

"Fucking infuriating," He grabbed the hair at the nape of her neck and  _lifted_  her out of the water for a kiss, just hefted her up to reach his lips. She had a feeling the man was going to brilliant things with her somewhat weightlessness. "Want me to be nice? Fine, I can be fucking nice."

His lips took control of her mouth, tongue sliding inside as he gripped her jaw in one hand. The taste of chlorine burned her nose, but otherwise it was the greatest kiss of her life, his mouth warm and moving soft and rhythmically. It made her kiss back instead of taking it, melting her in his arms so he could take what he wanted so easy. 

He opened her thighs with one of his, dragging her parted legs against the cock that was fully hard inside of his boxer briefs. Rey couldn't breathe when his lips lowered to her neck. "Feel how much this  _nice_  cock wants to fuck you, Rey."

She squirmed against the rough stimulation, so good and so fast and yet not enough. He laughed darkly when her nails sank into his skin. 

"I think Han's contacting lawyers about adopting you," Kylo whispered in her ear, "You going to tell him about this?"

She knew he was making it up. Preying on her weakness. Trying to knock her off the place she'd earned in his father's heart. 

"This is so fucked up," she growled at him, and he rolled his hips against her again, laughing at her as she arched out of the water. He laughed again, scooping her out of the water and helping her strip her one piece completely off from her seat at the edge of the pool. He pressed his lips to her breast, and she tried not the think of those sketches he had done. Who were the girls he had drawn, so perfect, so unclouded by their failure to be enough for him.

Chewie was in the house, asleep. Rey glanced over her shoulder, still clinging to Kylo's shoulders as he sucked her nipple, standing between her open legs. If she could just let herself have this, and not get caught, she would never think about Kylo or Ben again. 

As though she had learned nothing about always wanting more during her time at this house. 

The yard had a fence and high shrubberies. It would be fine. 

 He gave a dirty laugh against her nipple, lapping the drops of water that slithered down her chest from her knot of hair. Sitting naked at the edge of the pool was too conspicuous, but he was doing wicked things with his tongue that had her all hot and bothered. Naked, his torso pressed flush between her legs, letting her wetness drag in her search for friction to satisfy her. 

"I hate you," she murmured, cradling him to her breast. 

"No you don't, Rey, you put your fingers in your pussy and cum because you're so lonely for me."

She yanked his hair to pull his head back, hard, even as he laughed at her. He was such a fucking bastard. To bad it felt like she needed him to breathe at that moment. 

That was her last coherent thought when his lips pressed to her cunt, tongue already snaking out in the naughtiest way. He moaned his appreciation, or maybe it was laughter, when her thighs tightened around his head. The concrete scratched her shoulders as she arched into his insistent licks into her wetness, but she didn't give a shit because it was like Ben did come home. That feeling she imagined. Lightness. Completion. He worked her into a heady, unbearable pleasure as she chewed on her knuckles to try and hide the loudest of sounds. Coming from how much his words had worked her up, at the lightest touch, was the icing on the cake. Better yet, how he didn't stop after just one. Her free hand dug into his hair, which was fanned across her belly. The angle he got with her out of the pool and him rested at the edge, still in it, made for such a good platform for him to spread her out and devour her. She pulled his hair, starting to choke on which name to say when she was lapsing one orgasm into another, until he lifted his head with wild eyes. 

"I want you," she mumbled, her eyes glazed, and he grabbed her hips and pulled her back into the water. Her suit was somewhere abandoned on the concrete. Kylo held her over his cock with ease, but she relished the lightness she could maneuver her own body to sink down onto him. Once his head nudged her entrance, she gripped his shoulders and started to bear down. Water slapped at her bare breasts, something strangely sensual and from the way his eyes darkened, he loved the visual. 

"Rey," he held her up by her thighs in the water. She whined, grinding against his cock insistently. Kylo held her steady. "Feel free to call my bluff at any fucking time."

"You want me," she rolled her hips against his. His lips went white. "You want control of everything. So fucking take it."

Nothing supported her but his arms when he impaled her on his cock. Pure weightlessness when he filled her so hard. The breath rushed out of her lungs. She nearly choked on the release of air, her spine melting to nothing, her body just limp and taking as he nudged his way in and out with a shallow thrust. She couldn't even make a sound, just gripped his shoulders until her knuckles were white. 

"So fucking tight," he murmured, his face surprisingly serene as it dipped to her collarbone, sucking it with tender lips. Rey was trembling with pleasure, whimper as he lifted her up and down the length of his cock. "Is this how you pictured it?"

She shook her head, yanking his hair to gain some leverage to coax her own movements against him. He grunted. "Your bed. I'd be lying on my stomach and you'd press me into the mattress. Let me share, oh God-" her head fell back at his next thrust, knees bending to bounce her on his dick,  _"let me share."_

"It always felt like my bed, didn't it? _You knew."_

Rey shivered as his thumb stroked over her clit. 

"Does it terrify you, that we can both belong here? That we both deserve this?" she arched her back with a keening moan, smirking down at him as she hitched herself up by her legs. "For someone with control issues like yours, it must drive you fucking insane that you can't get rid of me."

Kylo slithered his tongue into her mouth until she opened completely, punishing her with a bite to her lower lip that had her yelp. But he kept her going up and down, water splashing around them, the hum of crickets in the distance. 

"Maybe I'm learning to share, Rey," he crooned, and Rey was fucking  _gone_  because when she looked in his eyes, she saw Ben.

* * *

Rey woke up in his bed. Kylo had placed her under his blankets, but hadn't bothered to dress her, because he could never be a complete gentleman. His large hand stroked circles on her stomach. They both had stiff, chlorine-mussed hair drying in all directions. The sun clung to their skin, even the slightest brushes awakened that phantom heat from all it had absorbed into them.

Her lips were kiss-swollen, her body aching at the rough treatment he had given her in the pool. She vaguely remembered him carrying her upstairs. She wanted to see if she would get away with using sleep for privacy, but he clearly had her caught because he was watching her face when her eyes fluttered open. 

"Han texted. He's crashing at Lando's."

There was discomfort in his voice. She didn't want to feel the pity that rose up. That he felt alone. That Han had let him down tonight, passing out without even noticing what may have even been, Rey was starting to realize, a cry for help.

Rey groaned, rolling closer to him on impulse. "We-"

"Shh," Kylo kissed her brow, somewhat fiercely as his hand still circled her skin. "Shut up."

"God, you sure know how to treat a girl, Solo."

"You're just going to ruin the first time I got laid while sober in, I don't know..." he shut his eyes. "I just want to smell your hair, tease you a little, and go to sleep."

"Yeah, you're a fucking Nicholas Sparks novel," Rey snuggled closer. "But I like this bed, so I'm going to let you keep me here."

"Generous of you," his hand curled around her bare hip. "Was I too rough?"

Entirely. Her cunt ached, every time she moved she thought of him. "No."

She meant it. 

He smirked before he kissed her. Arrogant bastard. His hands came up to cradle her breasts, thumbs toying with her nipples until she moaned into his mouth.

Her heart raced. How the fuck did she let this happen?

_"I can hear you thinking."_

They separate at the panicked noise she makes. 

"Han will always be  _your dad._  I'm just the girl who took advantage of his generosity and fucked everything up."

"You didn't," he kissed her shoulder, so much more relaxed than the usual high-strung guy who kept the house on edge. "No, you didn't," he repeated when she groaned. "I fucked it up. Blame me. I can be the first to move out, if it gets to that point. But it doesn't have to."

"We can't-" Rey buried her face in his chest. This wasn't as simple as the house came with accessories; the dad, the dog, the boyfriend. Kylo stroked her bare spine patiently, waiting. "It's a bad idea. You're in a difficult time. Han won't be happy with me."

"So we don't tell Han."

Lying, as a former addict, being such an easy thing for him profoundly disturbed her. 

"We...Kylo, that would really violate his trust."

Kylo's eyes flickered down to the sheets under them.

"It's up to you Rey. We can stop. Pretend this didn't happen. Or we keep going, because it feels good," he took her chin in his hand, pulling her eyes to his. "It felt really good, for me. I hope it feels good for you too. I want it to. I want it to help."

His voice always made her feel odd. It was like a rumble and a croak at the same time. Reassuring but unsettling. 

She was a person who had things now. A place to stay and a job and people to eat dinner with. Clothes and shoes and friends and a toolbox. This was supposed to be the solution of all her problems. 

_"I finally get you in my bed, I don't want you to leave."_

Rey moaned, pulling away before he seduced her for the second time in one evening.

"I liked it  _so much,"_  she stared at the ceiling. Better than any fantasy she had. Dirtier, meaner, more raw. But it was better that way. Rey let out a hopeless sound, drawing the sheets up over her head. She rolled on her side, and when she looked to the pillow next to her, Kylo was right there. Like her dream. 

"This can never happen again, if you want." He baited her, smirking at the unpleasant look on her face. "Or...we can sneak around."

Rey closed her eyes. "You've smelled my hair. You've teased me. Now go to sleep."

It wasn't a no. 

Kylo's laugh was soft, so close to her lips. She felt the slightest brush of a kiss, mingling their breath, his naked body coiled taut next to hers. 

The bed that smelled like him was a drug that took her under in minutes. The touch of his skin kept her there. Maybe she didn't belong in his room. Maybe she belonged in the room with him.


	2. please could you be tender

Finn and Rose were in love, and that just made it all worse.

Rey was proud of her efforts. Rey was happy for them. But she also saw, in the catalogue of her mind, the  _things_  adding up, and a hunger not unlike Kylo’s entered her heart.

One extra to-go cup of coffee clenched in Finn’s hand when he came into the garage every afternoon. Rose drank it with a smile pressed into every sip, reminded of the kind gesture. Rey drank too many cokes from Han's fridge, until her hands shook, until her teeth chattered. 

One  _very-small_  bikini that Rose acquired quite suddenly over the course of a weekend that she now wore when they swam together, all three of them, and when her shirt pulled over her head Finn’s eyes went dark. Rose looked nervous in it, clearly not used to showing off all the skin and tucking the strategic triangles over her curves. Rey looked down at her one piece, about as sexy as anything on the high school swim team.

One jacket, not new but  _exchanged,_  that Finn had lent Rey once too, before, when she was cold. But it took on a new meaning with Rose. She encased herself in it, and Finn would smile to himself like he built her a goddamn house. 

Rey had a moment of weakness: rifling through Rose’s purse when she was outside greeting Finn in the driveway when he got in his car.

It was like she needed to find a secret, her obsession with mysteries defined by random objects. Movie ticket stubs; the one Rey sent them to together by making plans and cancelling last minute, condemning them to be a pair. Lipstick, which Rose had recently been pretty liberal with applying for soft lips. Condoms.  _Shit._

Rey’s hands froze, immediate chastisement of herself could only be resolved by a sigh of relief and a resolution to try to find a free clinic in this city. Kylo, actually proving to not be a complete monster, was concerned enough in the morning  _after their idiotic decision to fuck_  to drive her straight to CVS and buy her some Plan B. She liked that about him; no splitting hairs about whether she was ovulating or pretending to understand her menstrual cycle and other female mysteries he knew nothing about; he asked her if she wanted a morning after pill, she nearly screamed  _yes,_  and he got her into a car to the 24-Hour Pharmacy.

He  _had_  also tried to kiss her silent as she flipped out in his room, soundless contortions of her face to prevent waking Han up, but she shoved him away, and he maintained a distance in a way that one could only describe as  _sulking._

 _Han was back, somehow._ Rey had woken up to the slam of the door, a lot of bumping and stumbling through the hallway. Kylo's eyes shot open at the sound of his father belly-flopping onto his mattress down the hall. Snoring took affect _immediately._ He must have driven back at the ass-crack of dawn to sleep in his own bed, in what would obviously be a hangover. Rey tried not to flinch at how that was really shitty to Ben.

Hopefully Han didn't notice that the rec room was empty.

She looked at Kylo standing in his old room, a place she had only really seen him in a designated bed-related focus, looking like he didn’t know how to fill it with her pacing around like she owned the place, having a reasonable and quiet meltdown that she had sex with  _Han’s son_  and they didn’t use protection. Cold, unforgiving light of morning cast shadows over his face at a low angle. 

“It’s going to be okay,” he promised. “Come with me.”

The trip was taken mostly in silence. It was early, she had woken him up in a panic the minute her pleasure-buzzed brain thought about his cum in her as anything but the hottest thing she’d ever felt. He had insisted they leave immediately after she told him, because Han was still asleep and there was…

_Some complications with his license._

Ben took the bus everywhere. All his meetings, the house was a few blocks away from a bus stop, and she didn’t think that much of it. She didn’t seem to grasp this until he looked ready to stuff her in the trunk when she shut the car door too loudly.

“We cannot get caught,” he told her darkly, and it hit her; the scar, the license, the accident. This was such a break in the mystery of Ben that of course it happened when she couldn’t think of anything else but _getting the fucking morning after pill._ She’d offer to drive, but a revoked license, with her nerves, was better than no license. Han kept offering to teach her but they both enjoyed his drives too much. It was a cycle of enabling.

She kept her eyes shut the whole drive, moaning when he hit potholes at his super slow driving pace. It made them feel like chasms, several feet deep.

"Oh, you're not dying," he finally told her when he parked, her head rested pathetically against the window.

And within twenty minutes of waking up Kylo briskly walked back to the car and handed her a CVS bag.

That they would never have to talk about this morning after ever again was the easiest pill to swallow. However, she wasn't even thinking about a pregnancy, this was still preventative, in her eyes. As if she could fly back and in time and prevent them from ever having sex. It was a pill-shaped REDO button. This is what the panic was over, why she couldn't fit a window of the 72 hours she had to take the pill without the life-or-death urgency, walking over to the drugstore this afternoon _so Kylo didn't have to break the law._ It was about trying to control what happened last night, to make it never have happened, to maybe make it the medicine that cures her of it ever happening again.

“You have something, for if this ever happens again?”

Rey shook her head, chewing her thumbnail between her teeth to not have to say anything. But he drank his coffee stoically, staring out the window at the empty car wash across the street. It felt like no one else in the world was awake yet. She took the pill in the passenger seat of Han’s car with some water Kylo also bought her.

Kylo looked very unnatural behind the wheel. Like he couldn’t sit still, be comfortable. Like he was wearing something that didn’t fit.

Where she was so used to this spot, with his father driving. It was the safest place in the world.

Kylo took her on a very different kind of errand.

“It’s going to happen again,” and he sighed when she flinched, “It doesn’t have to be  _with me,_  I’m not saying…but come on, I mean,  _look at you.”_

He was right. She couldn’t ever do this again, it was so stupid. Craziest yet was the measures to do a task plenty of women her age were probably doing that morning. That wasn’t the worst part. Kylo didn’t  _have a license, and neither did she-_

He was risking a lot, being there, stealing Han’s car. It was a lot  _for her._

He put his hand on her knee and squeezed. It wasn’t a sexual touch, and maybe the first time his hand had been on her since they dressed in a panic twenty minutes ago. She remembered for the first time that morning was the sex beyond the inconvenience of it. His cock inside her. His lips against her. The way he laughed when she came.

And here she was, tears crusting her eyes, exhaustion crippling her to the seat of the car, _missing it._

What a karmic sucker-punch. This wasn’t the cost of pleasure. This was the cost of fucking over Han. 

“Tell my dad you need a doctor’s appointment, just to get you on birth control. So this never happens again. We have some family friends, they’re discreet, you don’t have to worry about money…” he thought of something and chuckled, his concerned tone melting away.

“What?”

“If you hadn’t said anything this morning, you maybe would have had the easiest  _in_  to this family in the world. You want it so much,” He regarded her slyly, maybe cruelly, “Surprised you didn’t jump on it.”

“Not like this,” her voice cracked, her empty stomach coiling with a dissolving pill, a single sip of water, and all the fear in her body. She shook her head, ready to cry. “I don’t have to think like you to get what I want.”

Kylo cleared his throat. “I’m sorry,” he mumbled, digging the keys into the ignition. They drove home in silence. Though her fear truly had ended once the pill passed her lips. She realized as he drove at somehow both a snail’s pace and a brisk hustle, that unlike her, he wasn’t in the clear until all evidence of him in that car was gone. That he was  _fucked_  if they got caught.

As soon as they parked safely in the garage:

 _“This_  was karma,” she laughed in relief, motioning around the front of the car between them when the engine goes silent. Efficiently, in seconds, they slid out of their seats, returned the spare keys to the hook on the wall, grabbed sodas from the fridge (the unlocked one full of _just_ soda, not the fully-stocked bar in Han's office) and turned on the radio like they were  _just hanging out_  if Han found them there. He was such a good liar. She might be as good, when tested, and that terrified her.

She never pictured Ben here, but he knew where the bottle opener was screwed into a worktable and when he popped the caps off the neck of a bottle of coke, it was easy, well-practiced. And. Well. He looked good doing it. She gulped down her soda when he handed it to her.  _“This_. Okay. Learned  _my_  lesson. Oh thank God. It’s over. Never going to-”

He stared at her, coke bottle pressed to his lips. She drew a blank, stalling with another sip. The sun was fully up now, there was still nobody else awake but the birds, and the hum of a stubborn neighbor who only mowed the lawn at the worst time. She felt a shiver of solitude with him.

“Do you really want me to give up that easily?”

The relief that had rushed over her came to a halt. Was it over? Was it really done? 

"Certainly wouldn't impress me if you did," she blurted out, and wanted to cut out her tongue. Did she learn _nothing?_

_"Rey..."_

It was a question, managed to be, while not fulfilling the rules that technically make one. But she knew names could be mysteries. She searched him for the mystery of Ben every day. 

She couldn’t answer that. She instead went inside and fell asleep on her couch. She was in shock that everything went alright. That nothing went wrong, when everything could have in a matter of thirty minutes. 

If she ever doubted that there was good in him; she would remember he did that for her.

* * *

Enough time had now passed that she was  _safe,_  in the clear, she’d know  _by now if-_  and she’d even had to send Han out to buy tampons since then. But she didn’t exactly have the heart to ask him to pick her up some birth control. 

She was irresponsible. She got away with it, this time. But Rose’s little hidden anticipation in the form of a sleeve of condoms in her bag, tucked away to use with her newfound love, shamed her.  _If **she’d**  had her act together-_

Her hands shook while holding Rose’s open purse; the pieces that put together a person that made sense.  _Her_  purse had a wallet with a couple dollars, hair ties, some chapstick, a silica gel packet she forgot to throw out since Han bought it for her. She was a dollhouse with no furniture, a barbie taken along on a car trip without shoes on because she doesn't need them, and they'd just get lost. Absences, missing bits, that were obvious. Even Ben’s empty room secured him a place in this house; what trace of her was there if she vanished in the middle of the night?

Rose’s footsteps were coming closer, and other than sunglasses and a few robotics parts there wasn’t much to tell from the items inside a bag. Rey cast it back to the floor where Rose left it as Finn and Rose walked with a halo of young love illuminating them.

They were a sweet couple, but it placed Rey in an awkward, unnecessary place in their interactions. Rose was a prodigy in robotics, so it wasn’t really worth keeping Rey around for her engineering skills. Finn observed Rose’s talent with awe and keen interest, and Rey…offered sodas. Laughed too hard at radio DJs to try and knock the moony eye contact aside. Felt a pull in her chest she hadn’t felt since she was watching rain pour down the windshield of the falcon during the nights she slept in its rusty, broken frame. What good was having Kylo make her spine feel like it was uncoiling a few weeks ago when a meaningful hand squeeze between two other people made her want to go cry in the bathroom.

Kylo hadn’t touched her much. Since then. But he looked at her constantly, until finally she planted a foot on his thigh during dinner last night. Pressing down. Trying to order something out of him.

He merely smirked around a messy bite of salad, bending his head to catch the red onion and trembling shavings of carrots between his lips.

“Han,” his tone was abrupt, bratty, but for once Rey saw it was an act this time. “This is like the only time I’ve seen Rey eat a fruit. You  _need_  to get her to a doctor. What if she’s bringing in some diseases from off the street?”

"Bastard," she said.

“Don’t call me  _‘Han,’_ ” his father said at the same time with a rather uninterested tone. But he turned to Rey. “We should probably get you a check up. To see how you’re doing.”

And that was how Rey learned that sometimes Han and Ben used different words to say the same things.

Han made frequent jokes about Finn and Rose, seemed annoyed by the mushiness. Rey laughed at them, like she always did, but there was an unacknowledged wince from both of them. Love was stupid. Too bad they couldn’t think otherwise, or then it’d be really sad how little they had of it.

He was mildly disturbed by his garage being turned into their love nest, hands on his hips, casting dubious glances at Rey as the now outsiders.

“They’re being safe,” she joked, to make him twist that disgusted expression at her. She had learned to love grossing him out.  

 _Unlike me,_ she added to herself, but it was like a sigh of relief she could give herself every five minutes that _nothing happened,_ now that she had gotten away with it.

They watched, equally wary, as Rose and Finn found what  _everyone_  was looking for.

_Weren’t they?_

* * *

Han drove her to a doctor’s office a few weeks after the Plan B incident, walked her into the waiting room with the confoundedness of a man being forced into any room where the word  _uterus_  was going to be uttered, and only said one thing;

“I’m taking care of this. You discuss anything you need to discuss privately with that Doctor. Whatever you need. I’ll cover it.”

The look on both of their faces seemed to read  _God I hope you mean vaccines._

He was looking up at her from his comical seat at one of the chairs, celebrity gossip magazines fanned out on the coffee table in front of him. She felt a pang of guilt at the crappy waiting room chairs; Han’s back was acting up again. It bothered him in waves. Part of her working at the garage was her youthful flexibility, he couldn’t slide himself under cars to examining things and she could. It was the hindrance that made her useful, the thing that without it she may not be here. 

Han couldn't put to words what it really meant that he brought her here. But neither could she, and that was why she knew. It was so hard not to cry over what he was doing, what it meant for her finding a family, and what she had done to betray that. 

But Rey took that trust Han bestowed upon her and did what she though was right. She got an implant in her arm after a steady conversation with Dr Kalonia about long-term birth control, shoving the literature into her purse  _-not exactly what she was thinking of when she longed to put more in her purse a few days ago-_  and it was done. Han signed off on the paperwork in the office without reading it.  _Done._

Han trusted her, it fucking hurt so badly how much he trusted her. 

He took her through a drive-thru on the way home. They quoted  _Caddyshack_  between fries and drove past a bridge being constructed along the river and both of them whistled and wondered aloud about the ancient but seemingly impossible process of engineering a bridge as she tried to ignore the ache under her skin where the tiny contraceptive implant had been inserted. He talked about how the Falcon used to run, better than this piece of garbage, and how the rides were going to be when they fixed up the one in the garage.

“Used to take Ben out on Sunday afternoons, after soccer games. Made the travel league the first time he tried out. The ex called it a death trap, and-”

He faded off. He never said what happened to the  _original_  Falcon, why his search led him to the car Rey slept in. She assumed broken down for good, taken apart for scrap. 

In the car, they both were looking at the same thing. In the car, they both knew what they were looking at. In the car, it was a silent, easy understanding;  _you are my person._

* * *

It was an accident.

_It was._

She had swum over to him -shakily- to tell him to stop looking at her. She was self-conscious. Swimming wasn’t easy. He wasn’t helping.

And she did mean it, he made the bathing suit she wore feel impossibly small, or her limbs awkward and clumsy, or the depths of the water so much deeper when he locked his inquisitive gaze on whatever she was doing.

Later on she knew it was  _anything_  to talk to him, despite her attempts at resolve. He barely lifted his sunglasses, lying right on the edge of the concrete, parallel to the water. Han in the garage. Unable to hear them. Kylo’s face so close to hers.

“I live here too, you know,” he murmured, dropping the frames to settle back on the bridge of his nose. She grunted and rested her chin on the edge of the concrete. He was so  _close,_  she meant to try to knock him back a few feet, but he didn’t move. She could smell his hair. The sheets in the rec room just smelled like detergent. She tried to hide a quiet inhale. “And I’m supposed to watch you. I have to look out for my father’s favorite child.”

She shut her eyes.

“Stop.”

“I’m just getting started,” he regarded her quietly over the frames of his sunglasses. His smirk was intrigued with her, her reactions, and that made it so much harder to hide them. Her thighs clenched. Fingers pulled the strap of her suit aside to bare her shoulder. “And you want my attention, don’t you?”

“I don’t…”

“Uh huh,” he sounded unconvinced. “How was the doctor’s? Are you safe, Rey?”

She rested her chin on the concrete edge, fluttering her eyes shut. She nodded quickly, not sure why she was telling him. “Implant. I’m okay to go, I guess…”

Okay, she knew exactly why, but she really didn’t know-

“Good. Fucking you raw  _and_  sober was maybe the experience of a lifetime,” he smirked. “Worth the rehab.”

“Knock it off.”

“I’m just teasing. I know I’m like an older brother type to you, right?”

“Jesus, is this what you get off on?” her elbows dipped from the edge of the concrete into the water. Her wrists and hands shielded her chest before he tried to undress her. He held back a laugh, shrugging.

His tone around her was so different; mild, curious. The more she knew about him the more it felt like these were things she didn’t want to know. Scratches on the surface of who this mythic  _Ben_  was, who Kylo turned him into, never knowing if the source of the change was a devastating blow or a progressive, irreversible rot. She watched where the scar disappeared under his collar. The only evidence of that change she knew of.

The casual smile on his face was the one of the shy-looking young man on his motorbike, but with the confidence of the man who made her insides feel like the death of a star in this very pool.  _Being out of the water_  this much was what made her shiver. It’s cold. Not the memory. She tried to shove the memory down as his eyes roamed over her. 

“It’s only weird if you make it weird. Either we’re playing house like you want; I’m your brother, and you’re Han’s ideal child, and this is platonic. And we’re fine.  _Or,”_  he licked his lips, “you can’t forget how you came on my cock until you screamed, how perfect it felt, and how because of that, you will never belong here, to any of us. And you’re just a dirty girl who needs me any way you can get.”

Kylo Ren would never feel like a brother to her. That much was true. But guiltily, she realized, neither did Ben. Not after everything she did, waiting for him, in his bed.

 _“Or_  you’re a spoiled brat, who just wants to manipulate me and everyone else in your life to get what you want…” she said coldly, and she watched his Adam's apple bob as he swallowed the bitterness down.

She lifted her body slightly out of the pool. Lowered her lips to his. He made a grab for her, growling. Her teeth clamped down on his lower lip. He tried to drag her out of the water, baptize himself with her wet body over his. She pulled back into the pool, ungracefully, loudly splashing, and he caught her arm before she slipped into the water over her head, leaning on his other elbow, his body twisted towards her. 

There was a moment of panic that he was just going to let her go. Slip into the deep end. But he pulled her up by the arm, keeping her head above water.

She grabbed the edge, safe again. She had to have known, him sitting at the deep end, that no good would come of this conversation. The noise ceased when they went still. They could hear Han working about a dozen yards away. Oblivious, despite the outburst. 

“If you freak out and squeak and wriggle away every time  _you_  get close to me, that’s when I can’t control things. That’s how Han will find out. Hiding from him is the easy part, but I can’t keep us from getting caught if you panic every time I get near you, even when you want me to.”

 _Trust him,_  that’s what he implied. He was going to take care of it. He wouldn’t let anything bad happen.

She looked down at his hand around her arm. Gently placed her hand over his. 

And  _yanked_  him into the water, pulling herself out and wrapping herself in his towel as he sputtered and flailed, left where he landed. 

* * *

Kylo had learned, through quick observation, a good deal of her sexual tells, and that just made it  _much_  worse.

A hand would ghost over her ass on the way to the bathroom in the morning. Fingers would softly trace the skin behind her ears from seemingly out of nowhere. And he’d lie by the edge of the pool, sunglasses masking his face, even if Han was home while she swam, smirking at her when he caught her staring.

Kylo started joining in during every nightly movie; Han selecting, Rey agreeing, Kylo going so far as to give suggestions from the couch. But while Han was squintingly searching for the Christopher Reeve Superman DVD, Kylo was reaching across the couch to strum the inside of Rey’s thigh, daring her to make a sound and double daring her with his eyes to act like she didn’t like it.

“I don’t think we ever bought that one.”

“I’m pretty sure we did one Christmas…” Kylo replied vaguely, his fingers teasing her skin under the edge of her shorts. Rey shoved a cushion over her lap to try and hide it, but it more conspicuously accentuated the placement of where his fingers vanished to. 

“I’m not finding it.”

_Kylo certainly was._

She mouthed __knock it off_  _and he winked at her, his entire expression a signal to  _ _relax._  
_

“Oh, you know what,” his fingers left her skin. Kylo withdrew to his side of the couch. Rey was furiously blushing. “You’re right. We never actually bought that one.”

Han hadn’t glanced back once from the shelves lined with movies. Fuck.  _Because he trusted them._

“How about  _E.T._  instead?”

“S-sure,” Rey cut in shakily, her cheeks flushed. Kylo smirked at her. 

After a movie that was thankfully blockaded by Han in between them, Kylo made no efforts to move from the couch when the credits rolled.

“Might stay up and catch something on HBO at twelve,” he explained as Han stood up, “Rey suggested it.”

Rey remained silent, chewing her thumbnail. Han had barely kept his eyes open during the last half of the movie. She knew what was going to go down with this exchange. 

“My back has been bothering me, so I’m going to get to bed,” Han whistled for Chewie to wake up and follow him. “You guys enjoy. Don’t keep Rey up too late, Ben, it’s her room.”

 _“I won’t.”_  His lips quirked sinfully as Han retreated down the hallway. Then he seized the remote and while Rey was shivering from head to toe, he turned on a sports documentary and paid it no attention while he pulled her by the shoulders to rest herself under his arm.

His palm secured her to his side by her sternum, fingers fanned over her collarbones. She had half-expected him to ravage her on the floor the minute Han’s door shut for the night, but this was worse. This was just a passing familiarity to his body, the snug cuddling that should be platonic but felt so  _wrong_  because it wasn’t.

“Relax,” he murmured in her ear, “nothing is going to happen if you don’t want it to.”

“I owe so much to Han,” she shivered when his thumb circled her skin, “I can’t-”

“You already did,” he pointed out, but he rested himself against the arm of the couch, releasing his hold around her. “But it’s your choice.”

Only her own weight kept her pressed up against his body. And there it stayed, until she sighed and rested her head on his shoulder. He kissed the top of her head. 

_It's what everyone wants. Isn't this what everyone wants?_

It must have been, because it felt right. She felt safe. 

She was asleep when he turned off the TV. The silence was what startled her awake. Kylo’s arms slipped under her knees and behind her neck, lifting her off the couch.

“Since this is strictly platonic and normal, we can just crash in the same bed,” he reasoned, and Rey buried her face in his neck. “Nothing’s going to happen.”

 _“It’s not normal,”_  she whimpered, clinging to his shoulders. 

He laughed darkly, seating her on the edge of his bed. She dug her fists into the sheets that smelled like him. It was home. 

“I know,” he stroked her hair out of her face, “It’s so much better than normal.”

“Okay,” she broke, nodding at least knowing this time, they were being more responsible. They weren’t fighting and trying to shut each other up. She wasn’t pretending it was Ben whisking her away. Kylo was here and Kylo wanted to make her feel good and she told Kylo  _yes._

Her hands grasped his belt and eased the leather free, tugging open his jeans. He just stood over her, his hands in her hair, sighing without any of the aggression she had anticipated as she put her mouth on his cock. She wanted him deep. He was so hard that there was a soft choking sound when he nudged the back of her throat, unyielding. He tried to pull away, to gently guide her back, but she hummed in disagreement and relaxed her throat to take more. The sigh that poured out of him was worth it.

Tentatively, her fingers curled under his tee shirt, around the pale skin of his waist. He shuddered. He was ticklish. She smiled as her lips pulled up and down his length, toying with the discovery until he grabbed her hands and told her not to. 

“I’m gonna use that,” she murmured against the tip of his erection, smiling evilly up at him, “I’m going to remember that for when you drive me crazy.”

He reached a hand out and slide two fingertips down the curve behind her ear, skin stretched over bone and very sensitive. She jolted, lips sloppily brushing his cock in reaction, and he smirked down at her. 

“I have things I’m going to use too,” he warned, but the promise was so tempting she wanted everything at once. 

Her hands landed on his torso again, this time exploring instead of teasing. He let her. He trusted her. 

Was every man in this family making a mistake by doing that?

She wondered what the ghost of Ben thought, with her sucking off Kylo in his room. The space still didn’t feel like it belonged to Kylo, just as it never felt like it belonged to her in the months she slept in this bed without either of them. She wondered what had changed since the last time Ben came in this room and the time now, with Kylo flooding her mouth with heat and gripping her jaw tightly until she swallowed, a feral look in her eyes as she did.

She let him lay her down in his bed and suck on her nipples until she was shaking with the need to cum, her hand slipping between her thighs to show him how she did this without him for months, while he whispered sweet encouragement in her ear.

It was so much better to show him, it was intimate in its own way, and he seemed to understand. And he seemed to fucking love watching. 

"I'd hoped you'd like looking at me," she chewed her lower lip. Her fingers brushed his hair off his brow, catching the scar, and he flinched away. Her put an arm around her, on an angle her shoulders pressed to his chest so he could look down her body and see what she saw. There was a rumble in his chest as he watched from there, right in her ear. "Do you like it?"

Her voice cracked, neck arching over his shoulder. 

"Yes, Rey, you can't imagine how much. Fuck, you're beautiful."

It wasn't a climax for Ben this time. It was for Kylo.

She was too overwhelmed when he tried to kiss her, to slot his body into hers, so he just held her until she stopped trembling. At some point she fell asleep, his naked self next to her, his fingers in her hair.

In the morning, she woke in a panic to the sound of Han talking from the rec room, but the echo of Kylo’s sleepy voice in reply coming from down that hall was that he had wanted to watch but tv Rey was too tired, and that told her he slept there again instead.

She let herself accept this; they would not get caught if she trusted him.

* * *

Kylo rejected the offer to join in for the usual round of errands; Rey felt victorious. Something with Han that was still sacred, Chewie drooling on her shoulder from his place in the backseat, radio barely audible, driving to hell and back for specific obscure auto parts and consuming endless calories along the way.

“I know Ben is a difficult person to live with,” Han’s tone was poised, Rey almost choked on her french fry. “I’m sorry if he’s…testing you. It's what he does when he can't have that high anymore. Thank you for trying to make him feel more at home.”

Rey nodded, her throat constricting.

“You’ve done so much for me, Han,” tears edged the corners of her eyes. “I wish I could make it up to you.”

Meanwhile, her chest still ached from how hard Kylo had sucked on her nipples last night. It was like every time she was alone with Han she swore she would never do this again. And every time she was with Kylo she wore it was the last time. 

Han cleared his throat gruffly, obviously the dam had been broken on the emotional seal of this relationship; one found on mutual gruffness that was now crumbling.

“You’re a good kid.”

And Rey wanted to open up the passenger side door of the moving car and slide herself into oncoming traffic. She settled for changing the station on the radio, like a coward. 

* * *

While preparing dinner, Han announced that Leia was campaigning for her re-election on her home turf; he and Lando were going fishing out of town for the weekend as a result. If he was spotted blatantly on the other side of town during some ground-breaking photo op for her, it would look like he didn’t support her, but he also wasn’t going to drop everything to be at  _every event_  just to make it look like Leia was super cool with her ex to random strangers. 

This was all very new information for Rey, who was trying to keep up with telling State Legislator from State Representative and it was all a little too foreign for her.

Kylo tried to explain it while chopping zucchini into medallions to roast into chips. His movements were jerky as he attempted to multi-task, and all it came out very slowly, with words vanishing and disconnecting. He might have made her confusion worse. Every time his hair fell in his face while he worked he looked ready to rip it out of his head.

It was irritatingly adorable, like a kid who didn’t want help with his homework. So she snuck peeks of him cooking, only for him to yell at her, all the time. 

He was never comfortable with other people watching him cook, but Han wanted to get the steak on the grill so it would have time to rest, so father and son moved awkwardly around each other, especially for two men who were not comfortable  _ever_  touching.

Rey ate an apple as she watched from the kitchen island, a smirk on her face over what babies they could be.

And this was the normal part of every day. All three of them. Where it wasn't about hiding, or fighting, but just existing. It was funny how easily she forgot she and Kylo were doing anything wrong at times like this. 

“So you two will be on your own this weekend,” Rey nearly choked on her next bite. Han pointed the knife in his hand at Kylo,  _“You_  have a meeting with your sobriety counselor on Saturday and a drug test Monday morning. I dare you to try anything while I’m gone.”

“The only one to try anything this weekend will probably be Rey,” Kylo drawled, and Han grumbled to himself, and Rey knew her heart wouldn’t stop pounding until Monday.

* * *

Rey hadn’t smoked up in a few years, but Rose offered, and the idea of smoking pot with Rose was so absurd she sort of had to. Finn was incredibly straight-edge, coughing into the bong and losing his voice to the burn, that Rey was having a better time on less weed than it usually took.

This was a dick move for someone who had to go home to a recovering addict, but Han still had his secret beers and Kylo was hardly one for morally obligating her, and she clung to the hopes this would create some distance between them that she needed. And to help with her anxiety about being alone with Kylo, someone she was trying  _very hard to not have a thing with,_ convincing herself to stay away every time she woke up in the morning and utterly failing when he looked at her across a dark hallway, was running rampant. She watched Han pack up, nagging him about heating packs for his spine and remembering to bring bug spray and a hat. She never had anyone to fuss over before. It was kind of fun, even with him pretending to be annoyed at all the hovering. And when he was gone, it felt like her heart was a wind-up toy about the sputter off the edge of a table. 

“This is a first relationship for both of you, right?” she murmured in her haze, her head in Rose’s lap. Was it normal, amongst friends, to cuddle up like that? Kylo had disturbed her entire perception of  _platonic_  and  _normal._

“Yeah,” Rose’s voice was warm, and she didn’t stutter like she usually did when openly addressing their relationship. Finn made her nervous in a way that made Rey’s heart burst. Finn blushed at the insinuation.

“Yeah,” he looked at his shoes, planted on the floor of Rose’s crappy apartment. Rey was glad to be on their turf this time, having fled the house the second Han’s car left the driveway, Kyo even laughing and saying he wasn’t going to jump her just because he had  _every opportunity_  to now. That left more suggestive imagery and tension than if he just had done it. Then at least it would be over with.

“How do you get used to it, then?” Rey stared at the ceiling, “like, having that for the first time? How does it get normal?”

Rose giggled, her fingers playing with Rey’s hair. Maybe Kylo really was just a case of legendary sexual chemistry, because she could feel _this_ without wanting to fuck Rose every which way. “We haven’t yet,” she glanced at Finn, and he shrugged as if to say Y _eah, go on._ “Isn’t that the fun part?”

“It’s…scary,” Rey mused, and Finn perked up.

“Are you seeing someone?”

“I met someone…” she licked her lips, her mouth dry and her words hazy. “It’s too much. It’s too fast. And it won’t end well.”

“Hmm,” Rose stroked her hair. Rey could fall asleep like that. Real sleep, not an excuse to get in a bed and writhe around in someone’s smell. 

“Finn took my virginity,” Rose admitted softly, and Finn locked eyes with her. This must have been recent, based on their reaction. It was intense, Rey felt slightly edged out for a moment, but Rose drifted back to Rey’s question. “It wasn’t the big deal I thought it was going to be. It was  _happy._  It was…I felt safe with him. And that ended up being what mattered, why it wasn’t with anyone else.”

* * *

When Finn dropped her off, having smoked the least, a few hours later. Rey had waved off the offerings of the last few hours, mostly from guilt and for Finn and her to watch Rose launch into a very intense philosophical monologue about sentient sex robots that went on forever and was so detailed and intense Rey was half-convinced the world was going to end.

She tried to sneak upstairs. She should have known that wouldn’t work with Kylo in the house.

He was seated at the dining room table, bookmarking cookbooks and taking notes with a careful hand. Something involving a spiralizer, as she peered at the page when she tried to walk casually past.

“You alright?”

His tone was poised, a trap. Her hand hit clumsily against the frame of the door when she tried to lean on it. He raised his eyebrows. 

“Yeah,” she said slowly. He totally knew she was high. He could tell. Could he tell?

“Come here,” he pushed his book away. She found herself obeying, sobering up but still in a haze.

She yelped when he lifted her onto the table in front of him.

“You’ve been a naughty girl,” he chuckled, dipping close to take a whiff of her clothes, “getting high while _your dad_ is out of town.”

He did that a lot, like a child rejecting the real name of his new Stepdad or something. Called his father _Han_  to his face and called him _your dad_ to Rey. It was so immature she was starting to think it was ironic. 

“I’m really sorry,” she murmured, her tongue still thick. She was panicked, she knew it was more than a shitty thing to do when she lit up but she also was assured  _no one would be able to tell_  when she got home. But Kylo was subjected to a drug test on Monday, and she was basically flaunting that  _she_ wasn’t. Her voice came out rushed  _“I know you-”_

“Rey,” he stroked her thighs.  _“Relax._  I wasn’t in rehab for pot. You’re not going to make me  _lose control.”_

She sighed as his thumbs caressed her collarbones. Everything felt nice. Her neck arched back.

“I just don’t know what’s going to set you off.”

 _“You_  do,” he mused, licking a stripe up her skin. She shivered.  _Not that kind of high,_  she wanted to murmur back, but he was pulling her closer, needing her more. “And besides, my dad hasn’t exactly been showing me solidarity in sobriety.”

Rey took a shaky breath, like something inside her snapped, and the laxness and warmth leeched out of her skin. He sounded pained by the admission, but he smiled up at her, like he liked the pain. This may have been his place in the house, to prod at things that hurt, to examine them, to not let them go un-searched. The fact that he balanced out both Han and Rey now meant he was probably needed here more than she knew. She hoped that Kylo knew that too.

“Tell him,” Rey wove her fingers in his hair. “Kylo. Tell him this is important. That you need this from your father.”

“What I was  _trying_  to tell my dad,” he touched her lips with a cruel smile, “that if anyone knows how to get drugs, it’s a homeless person.”

She pulled back immediately.

 _Ben lacks control, so this is how he gets it. He will say some really shitty things to you_ Han had looked up at the sky when he told her this the week Kylo showed up. _Don't let him hurt you._

Ironically, she got weed from the squarest people she knew in a suburb,  _he_  was an addict _from_  that suburb, and it was  _fucked_  of him to say that to her.

But partially true. She did, even as someone who wasn’t using, because  _you see shit_  when you’re homeless. Rey was not the past person in that house to ask if you were an addict. She wasn’t exactly on friendly terms with junkies, but she knew them, where they usually were, could probably remember a name. At least where she lived before, but that still put, what, two hours between Kylo and whatever fix he wanted? She was a font of information Kylo could have tried to pry out of her at any time. She wondered why he didn’t.

 _Ignore the cruelty, find the pain._  

“Doesn’t it bother you? Being around it?”

Kylo leaned back in his chair. He clearly had plans for her that didn’t involve this conversation, but at least he let it happen.

“It’s definitely annoying to try to engage in a situation when you’re the only one sober for an extended period of time. But it’s not impossible. And you, specifically, are adorable when you let loose a little.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“That you’re trying to  _become_  just like my father, and I like you the way you are.” He kissed above the neckline of her tank top. She squirmed on the table as he unbuttoned her shorts. 

“Maybe we should...”

But she broke off her own sentence with a smile. 

He shrugged easily up at her, his hair falling over one eye. He was making a point in not touching her. This was a conversation, a proposition; not pressure. “We should fuck on this table and in the pool again and in the hammock and you can fall asleep in my bed after I’m done ruining you in it. That's what we _should.”_

“We  _eat_  at this table,” Rey said coldly, tying her hair up in a bun. There was a pregnant pause. “Go get a bathing suit on.”

He cracked a smile. "Will I really need it?"

* * *

The hammock was what broke them.

But they came _dangerously close_ to breaking the hammock. 

"I know I can," she insisted, her knees making the posts holding them up quake as she tried to push herself up. He grunted and held her hips steady, she'd almost fallen a few times. 

When they had stumbled outside, in a rush of lust, he had appraised her cautiously. 

"You're safe?"

She pointed to her arm, "I told you. Implant. Good for three years."

"You're sober?"

She nodded. "It's been a few hours. I can't say I'm not, like, buzzed, but this is not a mind-altered state. Finn and Rose are probably fucking like this right now. But thanks for the concern. _I consent,"_ she curtsied, a sarcastic show of formality. He rolled his eyes. 

"Good," he said, and picked her up and tossed her into the shallow end of the pool. 

He carried her around, her legs around his waist but at the front of his body this time, and they kissed and he played with her weightlessness just as cleverly as before. He looked _unearthly_ when they dipped underwater to look at each other. She couldn't stop kissing him when they did that. 

He was definitely monitoring her, she felt that, and got why this would not be fun for him all the time. But just this once seemed to suit his need for control. He asked questions, kept her talking, seemed to be gauging her level of sobriety and seemed to have set up some test she had to pass verbally before he got too physical with her.

The water having been a huge shock to her system (they had only kissed in the pool and gotten naked and entirely skipped the dining room table; _unsanitary_ ) that had broken through most of her buzz by the time they reached the hammock. At this point, she was calm, a little silly, but by no means out of control. It just meant she talked a lot during foreplay, and he laughed a lot, but gentler this time. Kissing her freckles and stroking her skin and asking her if she _felt more_ like this.

Not in the sense of her nerves, but maybe in the access to her mind. Not as self conscious. Trusting enough that the fence around the backyard would block anyone from seeing her ride Kylo in a hammock, which wasn't going so smoothly, but at least she did it with confidence.

There was longing there, and she tried to ignore it, but smoking had loosened her tongue:

"Is it enough now?" she pressed her hands down on his bare chest, wiggling her hips against him. The net of the hammock was making it really hard for her to rise up on her knees enough to take him inside her, so they had been sliding his cock against her pussy for a solid ten minutes while trying different positions. She may have even cum from that, she wasn't entirely sure, in a good way, "for you? Or is it never going to...?"

Kylo went still, his dark eyes calm, and shook his head. "It's not like that. It's not like, 'oh, I'm _limitless'_ while high. I'm _oblivious._  And this was on much stronger stuff than pot."

"I want to understand it," she shut her eyes, trying to get the right friction but the stupid hammock couldn't support them and be a workable source of traction. "Why this isn't enough for someone. This life."

"You're enough, Rey," he touched her face, gently brushing his thumb along her cheek. "You look like an angel. You are more than I deserve. It's just when you hate yourself, it helps."

"You shouldn't," she shook her head, coating the length of his cock with another brush of her wetness. He closed his eyes. His hair was falling back into the cradle of the hammock, fanned off his face, and she got to jut look at him. "If I can learn to like you, you can learn to like yourself, Ben Solo."

He gave up on her fumbling attempts to sheath herself on him, he reached between them and slid home. She went slack against him, resting her body along his as he rocked his hips, not hard or fast, but enough to get the hammock moving. He rested his chin on the top of her head. Her head on his chest as he slowly fucked into her felt _so right._

It couldn't _not_ feel like he wasn't cradling her to his body, which hit just about every psychological insecurity and absence she had. Her nails dug into his skin. Rose was right. It was so much better when you feel safe-

_"I'm not-"_

Rey clung to his shoulders. "You're _both,_ to me. Ben and Kylo."

She kissed his chest. He was stroking her hair, just quietly rolling his hips and letting her speak. His thighs, under her thighs, were working so hard, the muscles to tense it was making her mouth go dry while marveling at his strength. 

 _"I-I care about you."_ She gripped his arms, hiding her face in his chest. "I care about you and your father. This family. I know you don't want to be a part of it. But I do."

She should have known not to talk so much when he was being silent. He was just being so gentle that everything was falling away.

He pulled her down for a kiss, her breasts mashing into his chest, a hand snaking between them to play with her clit. She gripped his hair in her hands and let him kiss her and let him fuck her and let the hammock swing them back and forth and she came so hard she was surprised there was a person left for him to hold onto at the end of it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So remember how this was supposed to be two parts, then it was three?
> 
> .......okay shit it's probably going to be four. 
> 
> All the birth control drama was because I, like an idiot, mention condoms in another scene, and because I establish that condoms exist in this universe, so why weren't they used, etc, and now I have to work my way backwards through my fun porn scene like it has consequences. Damnit. (I actually think the CVS Scene, though unplanned [get it? haha] is the strongest in the chapter, ironically enough).
> 
> Next chapter is the Leia Chapter, I promise.


	3. i'll start letting go of little things

Leia was still in town when Han got back, and invited them to a fundraising event during a hushed, cursing-filled phone call where the device was handed back and forth between both Kylo and Han like a smoking gun.

Rey didn’t even have time to duck out and give them privacy; Kylo looking pissy, Han looking pained. She was stuck in the kitchen watching it all go down.

“Rey?”

Han’s eyes slid defensively up at her, phone clutched to his ear, to where she was eating grapes and trying very hard to no longer exist. He wasn’t talking to her, someone was talking  _about_  her. Kylo, who at this point was trying to hide his hand secured on her lower back, curled his fingers protectively around her hip. This was hidden by the kitchen island from Han’s spot by the sink, but it still made Rey too afraid to move.

“She’s a…small. I don’t know. _She’s like a smaller person.”_

Han made a frustrated noise and lifted his shoulders in defeat. “Rey, what’s your dress size?”

Kylo leaned over to the table to sip his water without lifting a hand from her.

“Looks like you’re coming too,” his grin was slightly sadistic. His hair fell over his face and she saw the tension chording under the collar of his black tee shirt. She swallowed thickly. Her body flinched when he squeezed. 

It was determined that it would look better,  _for the good of the family,_ if Leia’s ex and her son were at a fundraising event before she left the city. Han refused to refuse, even with Kylo needling him to like a teenager from the stool next to her at the kitchen island. Rey was invited along because there were  _some things_ Leia wanted  _clarified._  Neither men would let her out of it for varying levels of their needed emotional support. She’d do  _anything_  for Han at this point. Kylo, well, she still savored and feared what she could uncover with the right questions to the right people that night.

* * *

A dress and a pair of shoes in the size Rey had given Han were sent to the house. Kylo gave her the use of his room to try them on while Han was out in the garden, so she didn’t have the cramped bathroom or the many windows of the rec room impeding what was going to be, from the looks of it, a tight squeeze.

“Kylo?”

He appeared behind her, and though she hadn’t even lifted the dress out of the box, his eyes were on the floor as though she was already indecent. Her hands were filthy, and the material was white. It was a silent dare to be on good behavior while wearing it.

She held up her black fingers, and he sighed. She had washed them twice before opening the box, it just took a lot of soaking that she mostly opted out of because she was so used to it.

“Don’t take this personally,” he murmured, and she heard a drawer behind her open. She whirled around, but he was merely separating a pair of black socks from each other. “Put these over your hands.”

With some maneuvering, he helped her into the dress, guiding her to step into the skirt and tucking her arms through the holes. The sock-mittens had improvised a way to prevent any stains. Once it was settled on her shoulders, she pulled the socks free, an elegant slide, like opera gloves. He zipped her up, white and clean lines encasing her body, motor oil still on her fingers. She hissed when it pulled taut over her breasts; it was a hell of a weekend with Han gone and she was sporting love bites on her chest that could pass for blunt-force trauma. Kylo had bruised her with his mouth, seeming to love every minute as she writhed under his clever lips. She definitely more than  _seemed to_  as well.

He made a sympathetic purr when she flinched; that Sunday when he saw her step into the shower he looked like he was going to handcuff her to a hospital bed to get the marks  _taken care of._  She shrugged the concern off, even though it read as hilarious in his expression of worry. They'd fade. The moment, _as many did,_ had gotten away from them. She bore them like a Catholic who wouldn’t let her wounds close; she deserved this, in some fucked up way, because she had sinned against this house and against Han.

The dress did fit perfectly. She dropped the hair she was lifting out of the way. White, prim, covering from the base of her throat to her knees. Immediately she knew her role. The non-confrontational, sleekly feminine, apolitical arm candy. Rey resented it already.

For so long her role had been _“starved for affection, enjoys Han’s bad jokes, high tolerance for tedious hardware-based weekend hunts, useful with a screwdriver, low standards for domestic bliss.”_

And possibly, secretly, _"Kylo's Sex Therapy Project."_

She couldn’t walk in the shoes. She’d never really had to worry about high heels, and she found them immediately overrated.

Kylo pushed a laugh into her shoulder, examining her in the mirror in from of them, his cleaner, bigger hands roaming her curves.

“I look like the woman a Miami Kingpin kills on a yacht.”

Kylo shook his head, laughing to himself. “Did Han let you watch  _Scarface_?”

“I’m not a child,” she rolled her eyes.

“Didn’t even let  _me_  watch  _Scarface,_ ” he replied dryly, resting his chin on her shoulder. His eyes considered her in the dress very carefully.

“You look like who she would have picked out for me.”

And it was not a compliment. But he was right. Even her childish half-ponytail suddenly looked crisp and intentionally demure. Instead of just how she kept her hair out of her face when she was working on hot days. The shoes forced her to neaten up her feet, a sprawling, wide-stanced posture now shoved into slim submission.

Kylo cleared his throat. “Here.”

She closed her eyes when he pressed a box into her hand. This was a lot. This was too much. She already had to be dressed up by someone who didn’t know her. If there was a fancy name on the box she had to pretend to recognize, she might collapse from those crazy shoes.

“Why?”

“Because I wanted to give you something. Is that only okay when Han does it?”

These didn’t feel like  _her_ things, the dress and the shoes and the now imposing jewelry box, the way Han’s gifts did. She’d rather use the receipt of the dress to treat herself to a new impact driver or a steak dinner or even save up for her own car.

She didn’t open that box. She put it on the dresser. Her dirty hands closed over his, curved under her belly to hold her against him. He kept her from spoiling the fabric. 

“Who were you?”

He looked at her in the mirror. “What do you mean?”

He knew. But she had to know what she was asking for. Instead of pretending she wasn’t asking it, hoping he’d run with implied questions. Like he wasn’t the person she knew.

She cleared her throat.

“Who were you, instead of what they picked out? You always want us to know that you aren’t that. But  _what are_  you?”

He sighed. “You know why I’m here. Because even in trying not to become something I hated, I became a massive fuck-up.”

“I don’t think it has to be that black and white.”

He pulled her closer to him by the hips. She wobbled on the heels, at a disadvantage.

“I’d say the same thing about you, and how desperately you need to belong here. You don’t want to be anyone else but the Solo child Han never got, and you don’t even know who  _you are_  yet.”

The kitchen door opened and shut. Han was back inside. Kylo took one last glance at them in the mirror and slid out of the room with the resigned silence of a moody housecat. She heard the tv in the rec room turn on in order to have deniability for Rey’s costume change in his quarters. She let her eyes wander the bedroom again, trying to peel Kylo from off the walls and build a person out of the blank, dustless space. The shoes were starting to hurt, so she kicked them off.

The box on the dresser dared her to open it.

Inside was a simple silver chain and attached to it was the smallest wrench she had ever seen. Like it could fit into the hand of a Barbie. It had defined weight in her palm, like it could really be used too.

She hid her smile, as though Kylo could see it from down the hall. Then she clasped it around her neck.

She didn’t like the dress. She was uncomfortable with this because Han could make his generosity not completely feel like charity. Kylo could attach a reason for his gift, make it personal. Strangers could not.

The kitchen door banged open and shut again, she saw Han cross the yard from the window towards the flower beds, hose in hand. Out of earshot.

“Ben?” she called, enjoying his annoyed grunt. “Can you help me unzip this?”

* * *

Han’s back was acting up after a weekend of fishing, which is how Rey ended up in the attic.

“Can you grab me...” he rubbed a hand over the stubble on his chin. “There’s an old box of antique gears by the window of the crawl space. Figured I’d auction them off. I’d get them myself, but-”

Rey, who was the one nagging him about his pills for his back pain, was already halfway up the ladder, waving off the explanation.

And she found it. Ben’s stuff. All the things that had been scrubbed out of the room.

It started with the soccer ball, placed on a cardboard box and covered in dust. That she knew was a tangible thing: Han was always talking about the drives to games when Ben was growing up. But schoolwork in stacked, labelled boxes. BEN FRESH. BEN SOPH.; from BEN KIND. to BEN SR. Honor roll certificates, clearly taken off a wall somewhere and stacked in their orderly frames. Framed posters of that same bike she saw him riding in the video. Action figures, well worn, in the way children don’t know about objective value, just love. Well loved, buckets of them, plastic worth its weight in gold.

The  _stuff,_  all the crap that might have made this mystery so much easier, was right there. She could have crawled up there and probably known Ben as well as he knew himself, like a crazy person, had she been here before she met him. Poured through the files. Scoured the art projects that his precise hand had created, tried to find the drawings he saw worth displaying once. 

She left the things alone. She knew Kylo now. She didn’t know how to drag him backwards into this. So she left it alone.

She took the box downstairs to Han. And thought the better of it, and came back for the soccer ball. 

* * *

After dinner, she pleaded for a walk. The sun was just setting. There was a park around the corner.  _Both of them, please, let’s go._

Dishes left behind in the sink (typically her job as the most useless in the kitchen) the reluctant trio, and Chewie, set out down the sidewalk. 

Han surprisingly was the least comfortable. Kylo’s presence was already talked about on the block, Han doing anything out of the ordinary was what seemed to make a few neighbors linger at the end of their driveway, shouting out passive aggressive Suburban greetings. Kylo was good at ignoring it, Han trying to duck the attention like it was a walk of shame. 

Rey didn’t even notice, as she was carrying to soccer ball she’d revived with a bicycle pump in the garage.  _She was walking on air._  It was funny how massive the field felt once she led them to it, the goals dwarfing her, the length to the other posts seemingly miles once she was contained in the painted outline. Kylo looked ill at ease, as did Han, until she kicked the ball to his feet. 

At least, tried to.

“Inside of your foot,” he demonstrated back to her. “Tops of your toes means you’re either going to trip over it or you’ll hurt yourself. Probably both.”

She kicked with the curved side of her shoe, this time to Han.

“Better,” Han said, then hesitated, and kicked the ball over to Kylo. Kylo juggled the ball, his lips pursed, until Chewie darted to his feet, intrigued. 

“Haven’t done this in-”

 _“Yeah, I know,”_  Kylo’s voice was sharp, and they all paused as Chewie wrestled with the ball for a few feet. There was an awkward silence. Then he darted forward and kicked it to Rey, who yelped, because it sailed to her belly-high. She clumsily dodged it, and had to chase it as it rolled across the field. Chewie joined her in the pursuit.“It’s been a while.  _Right Rey?”_

“Okay, so I’ve never done this,” she chucked the ball at them. “I had a broken childhood. Happy?”

Han chuckled, “You’re doing just fine. It’s not a contest.”

Kylo let out a beleaguered sigh. 

“You only say that about the stuff _I’d_ win.  _Monopoly, Soccer, trivia-”_

“Can you boys  _shut up_  and pass me the ball?”

She yelped again as it whizzed past her, this time barely missing her face. But the arguments between them seemed toothless. Less loaded than the early weeks since Kylo returned. She couldn’t contain her grin. 

“Han, did you cheat at Monopoly?”

Han said  _no,_  Kylo said  _yes_  at exactly the same time. Chewie offered no break in the tie. 

Over the next hour, the sun ran down behind the trees like a broken yolk, both Han and Kylo seemed to be pleasantly stimulated while Rey was becoming grass-stained and out of breath. She felt Kylo laughing at her, in spite of himself, for most of it when she dove in front of the ball and _immediately regretted it_  many times. It was not a sexy look. She may has successfully killed any future seductions in one evening. But he kept looking at her. So maybe it backfired. 

Han broke the simple game of kicking it back and forth with a mention of how _when they used to do this,_ they’d get ice cream afterwards.

“And he also did the same thing of passively mentioning it so we’d have to  _ask_  to get ice cream.” Kylo grumbled, and Chewie raced in circles between all three of them. "Like it wasn't his idea."

“Can we get ice cream?” Rey grinned; breathless and sweaty and feeling so good she knew if she started laughing she’d never stop. And Han said yes, like it was her idea. 

They walked home, even Kylo indulging in a cone, and a vanilla cup for Chewie to eat when they got back _(he spent the summer Ben was in seventh grade sneaking out of the yard to beg at the ice cream stand’s parking lot, gained twenty pounds, had to put up a new fence)._

They watched a movie and made Rey try on her new shoes and walk circles around the rec room. She almost fell a lot, until Kylo started spotting her, and Han said very helpful things like:

"Didn't know we were watching _Bambi_ tonight."

Rey had not seen Bambi. Kylo still laughed at the joke.

Then Rey took a hot shower and put on clean pajamas and climbed into her own bed. Kylo heard her at midnight with her hand between her legs, even over the sound of the crickets outside, and slid into the room to her little pull-out couch and put his mouth on her in the darkness. He stroked her sensitive breasts and it tingled so bad she was shaking underneath him, the rattle of Han’s fan from down the hall the only promise that everything was as it should be. The secret was so big she thought it was going to break her apart, but she couldn’t have one without the other. This house without Kylo. Kylo’s attention without Han’s compassion.

Kylo called her  _my_   _girl, my good girl,_  as she came and came and then rested himself on the creaking mattress and stroked her hair until she feel asleep.

She had pretended she could run, she could go back. But she had no idea how to ever give this up. Any of it. 

* * *

Two days later Rey found herself armed with a mimosa, meeting Kylo’s mother.

The introductions went both  _less_  and _as_ messily as expected.

Leia was elegant and imposing, but much warmer than Rey had anticipated. They’d arrived early to “catch up” as Kylo had been trying to shake a meeting with his mother since he got out of rehab. And Leia had to meet Rey. And Leia had to make sure Han wasn’t going to show up and, well, play lip service to her opponent or some other obstinate thing.

Kylo had been miserable since they received the warning this was happening. The night before, Rey exhausted the length of her cooking skills to make him some hot chocolate. He burned his tongue and complained some more, but also kissed sugar and melted marshmallows into her mouth, a smile curving on his lips when he pulled her close. Han had almost caught them kissing in the kitchen.

When they arrived to the historic mansion in town hosting the event, Leia’s hands extended to be accepted by Han in an automatic greeting, Han bending to kiss her cheek. The Solo men both looked sharp in their suits, Han helping Rey manage the patio steps to the house in those impossible shoes turned a few heads in confusion over  _who Rey was here with._

Before meeting anyone else Kylo was presented with Kaydel, the unfortunate intern who would be “taking care” of him during the evening, which was a thinly veiled way of saying “tailing him to make sure he didn’t drink.”

Then Leia appeared, her grin so much more sardonic than Rey had pictured, and Han was kissing her cheek. It was an amicable embrace that made Rey soften to this entire affair. Her being forced into a dress probably picked out by one of Leia’s interns; stiff and white and with a pencil skirt binding her knees too tightly together. And washing her hands like Lady Macbeth the night before to get all the oil off. Dish soap was what it took; soaking for fifteen minutes while the boys gave useless alternative advice on what to do if that didn't work. Kylo being moody over being tailed by another intern to make sure he wasn’t taking any of the free booze. Han sleeping in the garage after they got the call telling them to be there early tonight with probably a now-empty six pack. And Leia seeming unable to know what to do with Rey, calling her “practically family” in a story that really shouldn’t have changed with every person who confronted her about Rey’s mysterious presence. Over the course of the evening Rey overheard she was Han’s niece, a family friend’s daughter, Ben’s cousin. The biggest lie seemed to be that she belonged here.

But Leia was warm when she greeted the ragtag group during the set-up for her party. Even Han was smiling.

“I bought that jacket,” Leia mused, examining the material Han was wearing between her fingers.

“New jacket,” Han pulled back slightly, offended. “Oh, forgot my Carise Sindian campaign button.”

Rey wasn't entirely sure what that meant but she had seen him rip up some Sindian signs from around the neighborhood.

Leia cracked a dry laugh when Han stepped away to look at her.

“Still think it was a good idea to bring me out for this, princess?”

Her mouth twisted in a hidden smile. “I know you. Your heart is bigger than you pretend. You would never do anything to ruin this. You just want me to  _think_  you would.”

Han laughed sheepishly. “Can’t even do that properly these days, can I?”

She cracked a genuine grin. “You look good, Han.”

Rey heard Kylo mutter something under his breath, his eyes on the floor. While no eyes were on them, she reached out, teased her pointer finger on the line across his empty palm. He clenched his fist, trying to catch her fingers, but she was already gone and his hand only caught air.

He stepped forward and gave his mother a cool kiss on the cheek like he was crossing a security checkpoint. Rey was horrified by the pain on his mother’s face, for herself for witnessing it, and for what he had in front of him that he just stepped on. She had looked  _excited_  to see him.

“I hope my son’s not giving you too many problems,” Leia stepped through the blight, offering her hand to Rey. 

Rey didn’t know how to greet Leia other than  _“I’m not fucking your ex husband, but I definitely am with your compromised son”_  so she kept her mouth shut during the handshake. Leia looked her dead in the eye and in seconds seemed to come to a conclusion, her smile now keen and welcoming.

“Han told me your were sleeping in that old piece of junk. I’m glad you have a place to stay. There’s a homelessness initiative I’m drafting, if re-elected, that I’d love if you-”

Kylo guided Rey away from the conversation somewhat rudely with his hand closing around her elbow. “She’s not here for politics, mother.”

He yanked her away from Leia and the cluster of interns and volunteers, away to a window of a ballroom that was catching the last of the sunshine before the actual guests arrived; torrential rain was predicted around the hour this started. She heard Han mumble something to Leia as they sped off. It sounded weary.

She heard Kylo sarcastically muttering  _‘everything’s just peachy, we’re all such good friends now’_  under his breath as she stumbled on her high heels over with him.

She had expected him to be confrontational, but instead he smiled ironically. Maybe that was just his smile. Kaydel was murmuring something to his mother, Leia appearing to be issuing a direct order, before racing over to keep him from consuming any alcohol. But Kylo was just looking at Rey. He slid his thumb along the neckline of her dress.

“Your chest has been very sensitive for the past few days,” and her shoulders nearly collapsed down to not feel so exposed, “Is it your nipples? Was I too rough on them? I thought you liked it, you had that look in your eyes when I was playing with them. From the pool. When you said you hated me.”

He knew. He knew from when she pressed her shaking hands to his shoulders and he asked if she was alright.

 _“Sensitive,”_  she had stuttered out, an excuse, and he laughed as he tongued her peaks. 

 _“I love your sensitive nipples,”_ and there was a fucked up, amazing sort of glee in his voice. He _marveled_ at her. She ended up pulling him closer, begging for more. 

She shook off the memory, catching him stare at her and knowing it’s what he was thinking of too.

His meticulous attention to her was going to get them  _so caught,_  no matter how much she trusted him.

She took his chin in her hand, holding his eyes steady to hers, not her very sensitive breasts. She had woken up with purple marks all over them after the other night, and she did still ache a little when anything brushed against her. They were fading now. Han being home at least gave her a break from how thoroughly Kylo could claim her every night.

Their final day of solitude was spent in his bed. She had learned a lot about Kylo, like how he hummed whenever he ate her out and it sounded like he was singing for her. Not so much about Ben.

“You know I want her to like me, right?” Rey crossed her arms over her chest. “It’s important to me.”

He grabbed a mimosa off a tray passing by, handing it to her before she protested. “Just look pretty. Just be here. She’s feeling out for a use for you so just play the part and don’t add to her scheming.”

“Stop it, maybe she thinks people want to do some good in this world.”

“Yeah, and maybe she’s got a drafted initiative for every problem in her life. Mental health. Homelessness.  _Addiction,”_  he glared out the window at the garden that had optimistically been set up for a cocktail hour, servers hauling everything back inside in anticipation of the oncoming storm, “And how good would it look for her if her recovering addict son was an open supporter of that bill getting passed?”

It sounded like it was a situation that could only be beneficial to  _him_  or he’d lose his goddamn mind.

Rey sighed, taking a sip of her cocktail. “You can’t make me drink  _for you_  every time when you’re fixing for it.”

He cracked a soft breath of a laugh. “It’s like with the weed. It’s more fun to be around you when you’re tipsy than to  _be_  tipsy. Maybe you’re my new addiction.”

“That is a  _horrible_  position to put me in,” Rey found herself smiling anyway. She took a sip for him, and she swore she saw him swallow as she did.

Kaydel cut in to hand him a cranberry juice. He looked vaguely disgusted by the offer. With only a glare, she managed to force him to take it, and withdrew about fifteen feet away and pulled out her phone.

Clearly in a mood to risk everything, he sized Rey up.  

“In those shoes, you’re going to need someone to carry you to bed. You’re going to need someone to take off that dress. And I love taking care of you,” he smirked as she flushed and turned away from him, “Because you fight me on it. It’s not dressing up a little doll, it’s coaxing you to let me do it. It’s challenging. Engaging. How you whine when I try to put you to bed.”

Rey set down her empty champagne flute. Nobody had tried to take care of her for a long time. Even Han had made these proposals to her like she was fine either way. Like her situation was not pathetically desperate. And then Kylo showed up and wanted to spoon-feed her pleasure; making her feel sloppy and hopeless and so fucking  _loved._

“I think your mother sees a lot for you, and what you can do for other people,” Rey added carefully, staring out the window, not letting him distract her no matter how wet she was getting at his words. “And she cares. I think this is her way of showing it. By finding solutions. I think she’s good at that.”

“Right, and I think right now we need to be the things she needs us to be,” Kylo bent close to her ear, his hair brushing her skin, “And now you’re 'my little cousin', remember? Funny how when you walk in those heels, I remember how you walked for two days after I fucked you.”

Rey pulled herself away before she was caught with him, very clearly not being his cousin or his adopted sister or anyone Han would feel comfortable keeping under his roof.

* * *

Rey felt funny about the interaction the rest of the evening. She allowed Leia’s campaign manager, Poe, to show her around the historic building.

“This room  _looks_ 15x17,” he swept an arm grandly, like he was selling her the place. She sipped a glass of what the event had transitioned the menu into in the evening, a sparkling white wine. “But, if you look through this doorway.”

She peered into the next room. The wall between was several feet thick. She had an idea where this was going; Han loved documentaries on prohibition smugglers, she was getting caught up on the intricacies of ‘the old days’. “It’s bigger.”

Poe nodded, a smile gracing his lips. “Secret tunnels. Renovations for bootlegging. They’d hide it in the walls.”

“Maybe they should have been born later,” she tilted her glass to her lips. Poe laughed, but he seemed to do that more because a woman was making a joke than if he found it funny.

The lights flickered. They both glanced up at the antique chandeliers overhead.

"Storm's coming tonight," Poe smiled, "And the one thing we didn't think of if old houses and old _wiring._ "

He knew this because he had booked the venue for the event. She knew because he told her. There was a necessary vibe, a capable one, that she felt at ease around, instead of sticking out like a sore thumb all the time. She laughed at his easy jokes, took his arm when the shoes she was wearing proved to be too much, let him hand her cocktails and dance with her. He was sweet. She felt welcome, and out of the way, with another person deemed necessary at that event but was also  _working_ to belong there.

She wasn't missed; Han and Kylo seemed to be forced into making social rounds with people who knew them in past lives. 

Leia interrupted one dance, where Rey was also laughing because he said a joke, not because she thought it was funny, and clasped her hand around Rey’s.

“You probably feel a little overwhelmed by this, sorry for the ambush.”

Rey shook her head demurely. This dress really did the work for her. “It’s alright. Han has been so generous, it’s nothing to ask for me to be here.”

Leia nodded, sensing bullshit. Rey liked her more for it.

“You have definitely reminded him he has a big heart, deep down. I think he forgot that for a while. I’m glad you’re in that house, Rey. It’s a delicate balance. I can’t say I trust it will end well, but Ben could also use someone…who isn’t a parent. Fresh set of eyes.”

Rey nodded suspiciously. Leia set down her royal flush. Her eyes skipped sidelong to Kylo, sulking in the corner.

_“Does Han know?”_

Rey paled and shook her head. Leia chuckled. “I’m not going to tell him. I’d rather not be the messenger he shoots in that regard. But it’s a delicate balance, isn’t it?”

Rey stayed silent, her chest feeling like it was going to bust out of her dress. Leia’s warning was clear; _don’t fuck with her boys._ No bullshit. She shot pretty straight for a politician. Rey respected her.

Leia patted Rey’s hand. “This  _cousin thing_  was a clumsy maneuver. I’d better start telling  _the other half_  of the guests tonight that you’re a friend of Ben’s from summer camp. Actually, let’s say a charity youth trip building houses for Hurricane Relief. Sounds more legit.”

“Rey,” Kylo’s hand was closing over hers. Her legs were shaking, Leia had really been holding her up by the hands the past few seconds, Poe even closing in with a hand on her lower back in support. 

“What did she say?”

“Nothing,” Rey patted his arm. Half the ballroom though they were cousins, the other half were going to think they were rekindling a preteen flame within the hour. He played it a pretty safe line between the two. She smiled, and let him reluctantly drag her up against him, blending in on the dance floor so she could catch her breath. 

"I don't fit in here."

He barely shrugged as she flushed, they couldn't move that well because her feet were killing her, so he improvised an awkward-prom-style rotation.

"I don't want you to belong here. I don't want to belong here either. You can belong-"

The power shut off briefly. There was a din of chaos, elbows around them bumping, unnecessary shouts. Kylo curled her closer in his arms in the darkness, tight, protective. She leaned in to smell him, _smell Ben_ in the old suit that fit so well, and pressed a kiss to his neck. Unable to see, she was able to _feel_ him shudder.

His lips brushed her ear.

"With me."

And then the lights turned back on. There was canned applause for the back-up generator in the mansion, thanks to Poe's planning. Rey and Kylo resumed a healthy distance.

They didn’t talk at all as they danced for the rest of the song, but it was his only one of the evening. She heard other women, pretty women, women from his own world who saw him as better than she did, ask. But he said no.

There were things that were a lot for Han to do for another person. She was learning there were just as many for Kylo.

* * *

There were speeches, endorsements, but the new trio was kept in the back of the dining room for most of the official business. Han seemed to appreciate the free booze, Rey felt her chest constrict at how much Kylo fidgeted. Everyone wanted to know how he was doing, what he was up to. No one at the table talked to her except Han, which one girl with a red bob so sharp it was almost rectangular smirked at as though she was catching her and Leia ex husband in the act. Kylo barely answered any questions, didn’t respond to the name Ben. All that agitation, that nervous energy. But this was not the place to reveal she knew him better than anyone thought. She waved off attempts by waiters to refill her glass of wine, pushed her only source of comfort, food, onto his plate when he finished his serving of fish or vegetables. He just ate those as well without acknowledging it.

Later in the evening, she felt tears squeeze out her eyes when Han and Leia had one gracious dance, like everyone in the room knew their history and they were making a gesture of good faith, and looked genuinely happy to extend it to each other. Leia was laughing. Han was smiling, pained, but not because he didn't want to smile. 

Maybe it hurt to want to.

She tried to catch Kylo’s eye. There had to be some joy surmised by this. That they could still be friends. That they could get along. That his family still cared about each other, even separately.

He looked miserable. He looked so handsome she wanted to cry, but he looked miserable. He wore his suit like he belonged there, seemed to be talking to someone at the table who knew him and wanted to know how he was doing, if he was alright.

There wasn’t a single person from her old life who saw she’d vanished and asked a second question. And in that life, that probably meant she was dead. Nobody cared.

Kylo had the luxury of belonging here no matter what he did. She had to try. There was no alternative.

It was the hardest thing she’d ever done.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Man, I should probably finish Perfumed in Obsession" I say and I keep writing and extending this story.
> 
> I did name it *endless* summer afternoon. My bad.


	4. now we sit in your car and our love is a ghost

Rey had fallen asleep in the car home, her head resting on his shoulder. She didn’t remember actively choosing the backseat instead of the passenger.  _Oh wait._  They got a cab, Han also had too much to drink. He was in the front. Some poor intern had to move Han’s car in the morning. 

It was too much  _stuff;_  rings and bracelets and chandeliers. Champagne flutes, leather-bound notebooks for petitions, gemstone-studded reading glasses for people making thirty second opening remarks. Hair clips and checkbooks and too many forks. She once felt like a proper lady trying on a sundress from Target. She didn’t like this feeling, that she was so far off. That what was enough for her was never enough for these people. 

Han and the driver got into a heated debate of the Oldies station playing. Kylo slid his fingers up and down her thigh as she kept trying to find nice things to say about the evening. 

“You both are babies. I  _like_  Leia. She wants me to make a speech for-”

The name of what she was supposed to talk about slurred out of her, the word lost. The soothing touches weren't working on her; she was too sloppy.

Kylo’s tone was dry;

“Hush, Rey.”

Han was busy with his argument. 

“Were you okay?” Rey let words fall out of her, she saw in Kylo’s eyes he was prepared to clap his hand over her mouth so she wouldn’t reveal any secrets they were trying to keep from Han. “Not drinking?  _Sorry.”_

Her tone melted into a slight whine, the  _‘are you mad at meee?’_  pitch that no man wants to hear from a girl after midnight. She saw the flicker of that control flare, like when he was struggling with a recipe when Han was rushing him or someone challenged something he regarded as fact. 

“She okay?” Han barked. Her cheek was mashed against Kylo’s arm.

“Dameron got her shitfaced.” Kylo’s tone was disgusted. Rey had an excuse to press her face into his shoulder. He responded as awkwardly as someone who was as unfamiliar with her body as he was pretending to be. He patted her back tentatively. “He’ll be calling the house this week. Since she doesn’t have a cell phone.  _Rey has a date.”_

She’d forgotten she agreed to that. Spitefully, in fact. She had been on her best behavior all night and most people had sneered at that, so when Poe was being nice to her, letting generous amounts of champagne grace her glass, she just went with it. Leia  _already knowing_  had put a countdown on her time in this place, a great adventure, but her return to where she came from was imminent. She tried to hide her heartbreak with laughter. 

After the dance floor and all his proclamations, Kylo had made himself scarce from her. Redhead with the square bob was making her case for his attention, and even though he was hardly rewarding the efforts, it did leave the bounds of her territory over him hard to cross. Whereas Han, and Poe, were at least trying to see if Rey was having a good time. Han was as bad a dancer as she was, but they were just as well versed in the old songs he’d play on car rides so it was a moment of commonality. Poe was as enthusiastic in his appreciation, though more graceful, and not allowed to appear as silly as Rey and Han were, he joined in when he wasn’t running errands for Leia.

She was tired of lying, of running this plateau of her and Kylo’s doomed affair until it dropped out from under her. She wanted something normal. 

“First date?” Han looked about as proud and prudent as a father figure could in this scenario. She hid her smile. Kylo had an arm around her, seemingly keeping her from tipping when the car curved around a turn, but stroked her hip sympathetically. She was dimly aware of her makeup smearing onto Kylo’s beautiful white shirt. 

Rey nodded. “I’ve never been on a date before.”

Kylo physically softened next to her. 

She pictured a sleek little car, a jacket over her shoulders like Rose with Finn’s, popcorn in hand. Things. She pictured activities in relation to the things she’d never had. Mini golf putters. Ice skates. Sports jerseys.

“I drank too much,” she pressed, her eyes squinted shut. Kylo’s only response is a slight rumble in his chest only she could hear. 

 Han only chuckled. “Sneaks up on you, doesn’t it Rey?”

Her head swam, but there was something weird about him asking, about the way Kylo’s hand clenched into a fist on his leg. Tears pricked at her eyes. Why was she crying?

_Oh yeah._

Because she was a fucking liar.

Kylo whispered, a tone of exhaustion about him, for her to sleep. She must be wearing  _everything_  on her face. She nodded off and caught the rest of the night in glimpses.

Han was in a state as well, so when the car pulled up to the house, Rey didn’t hear a conversation. She heard an order; from Kylo, to his father. 

“I’ll take care of her.”

Han waved it off, halfway to the door where they already heard Chewie pressing his paws to the other side, barking in a deep, but quiet, resounding way. Kylo made to pick her up before she could protest. She  _could_  walk, but her blistered feet had caused him to gasp when she kicked her shoes off the minute she slid into the car, and he had a flair for the dramatic. She only fought it for a second or two. 

He carried her into the house, Han hovering only long enough to witness Kylo washing her face with a cool cloth and making her drink a massive glass of water before his own feet thudded to his room. He really couldn’t suspect a thing, if that was his reaction. So casual.  _Trusting._

Her face crumpled up, because she didn’t deserve it. 

“I shouldn’t have-”

Kylo wet a washcloth under the faucet behind her. He poised it over her face with a gentle, cool press so the droplets poured down her cheek.

“I know this is a secret, Rey. You deserve to be taken on a date. You can want to be normal for once. I want you to go, and have a nice time.”

His hand was steady as it mopped the runny eyeliner off her lids. She started to fiddle with the necklace he gave her, hidden under her clothes. If Han saw it he’d ask questions. It was instead tucked under everything she wore, but it was safe now to stroke her fingers down the neck of the little charm. 

They heard Han snoring within seconds, Chewie’s heavy breathing from down the hall. So Kylo kissed her, with her sitting on the bathroom counter, her battered feet hanging uselessly down

“Are you mad?”

He handed her some potassium tablets from the relatively empty medicine cabinet. Anything stronger must have been hidden from his access. 

“I’m not mad.”

His tone was remarkably calm. She felt her lips pursing, her cheeks flushed after swallowing the pills. She couldn’t sit still -or sit up straight- her head knocked against the mirror, and so he held her steady, cushioned by his big hands. 

“Everyone was drinking.”

“I know. Imagine how  _I_  feel at these things.”

“I’m sorry.”

He picked her up. “I got to focus on you, so I had a little distraction. But I’m  _done_  when it comes to owing my mother that way.”

She felt the vulnerability in the admission, but then he was lifting her up. Kylo checked the hallway before carrying her to his room. To see if it was safe. He helped her out of that dress that felt like a straitjacket and tied her hair up in a bun that barely functioned as one and slid her into one of his tee shirts. 

She watched him undress for bed, unable to move from her booze-slanted seat on the mattress. It still shocked her she was in Ben’s room with  _the person who used to be Ben._

"Everyone was laughing at me," tears were welling up. He made a sympathetic noise, cuddling her to his chest after he dressed her. 

"No, they were whispering about how they thought I was shooting up in the bathroom. You're just drunk, Rey, I should have smacked half those drinks out of Dameron's hands."

When she lay down and winced at the sensitivity at her chest, he lifted the hem of the shirt and tongued her sensitive nipples, soft little licks, more of an improvised way to bathe the soreness away than anything sexual, though she certainly got something out of it that he didn’t seem to. Something so tender and gentle was sensual in how un-erotic it was. It fucking felt good, but he wasn't doing something for him. It was for her.

He was so solid against her as she shivered. She tried to melt against him, be the perfect thing to press into and roughly fuck, but he held himself back. This was different from a stoned Saturday afternoon. This was nothing like that. He just stayed close and comforted her, but rejected her roaming touches. 

“He’ll call tomorrow,” his tone was reassuring, “you were the only one there tonight who didn’t have a stick up your ass. You’re beautiful. He’d be crazy not to.”

When she whimpered in protest, he took her hand in his and kissed her palm. “I’m being realistic here too, Rey. It’s not like I can resent that you need this. You should to experience this.”

“If you could take me on a date, I would-”

“Don’t say that,” he brushed the hair that was already falling loose out of her face. “You’re adorable. But don’t say that. I can't even drive you anywhere.”

There it was. The self-loathing that seemed to be the crux of all this. She heard hate in his voice more vile than anything he'd aimed at her or his parents. It chilled her, made her clutch at his cheeks, shaking her head. 

“Ask me to be sober for you,” she threaded her hands in his hair.

He shook his head. “You don’t have to.”

"Please, Ben."

"It's not the time."

She could barely open her eyes. “Ask me. Practice asking for the people who  _matter_  to you. I’ll make it easy. I’ll already say yes. So ask me.”

He rested himself on his stomach, cheek pressed into the pillow. This wasn’t a bed for more than one person, so they were about as entwined as two people can possibly be in order to fit. It was hard to ignore her like he was trying to. 

“Rey, go to sleep.”

* * *

The morning split her skull like an ax. Her throat was dry. Her voice cracked as she reached blindly for his skin.

She remembered at some point in the night getting flushed and huffy and throwing her shirt across the room, him chuckling, getting up to turn on the overhead fan, and collecting her back down under the covers. 

Kylo rolled onto his side,  _it was some kind of trick_  she thought, when the light was slanting into the room and he rolled onto his side with his bare chest threatening to collapse over her. It was too hard to resist; there had to be something he wanted from her. She groaned pathetically, her knees coming to collect him against her with a tight grip on his ribcage. A cuddle like a koala baby; snuggled to his bare front in a ball of her bare  _everything._

“Wake up,” he told her, in his version of cheerful. Which was smug, she was beginning to notice. “If we get up now we can shower before Han is awake.”

It wasn’t the  _worst_  reason to be kicked out of bed, but it was the one that sucked the most to hear.

Her eyes squinted shut, so glorious was the sunrise on his chest that she had to make a point of ignoring him, because he was trying to play it in his advantage on a small bed meant for a teenager that they were currently sharing.

"You okay?"

She nodded. "I'm...really sorry about last night."

All she got was a head shake. His sweet teasing about how cute she was tipsy was nowhere to be found, mostly because last night was not cute. 

Kylo’s hands stroked up and down her legs. It should have felt nice, but the throbbing in her feet from those fucking shoes had now melted inward to a creak in her bones. Her head was splitting with a hangover, but that was a subject she didn’t want to breech with him after the events from the night before. Instead she weathered the puffy, aching feeling in her skull silently.

"Get up. We don't have much time."

“Why does it matter if Han is awake?”

He nuzzled his face into her neck. 

“So we can both shower, together.”

* * *

She got soap in her mouth kissing his chest, but it made him laugh harder than she’d ever seen, so she covered his mouth with her hand and that made him get soap in his mouth too. The potassium had really helped, as had the water, so even though she felt like death on toast it could have been much worse. She held it together long enough to coax his body to forgive her with her hands and mouth, cum and water soaking into her hair as he panted above her. 

He extracted himself early to give them cover, going to far as the shut off the water for a minute as though they were only passing off the use of the bathroom, and let her soak her hungover body and rinse off in sweet solitude. Han was making breakfast when she was dressed and headed downstairs, making the timing of their exchange so close her heart was racing. Kylo shot her a  _don’t look at him like that_  face. She wore guilt unnaturally, her flush coloring down her neck. 

“What’s the schedule today?” she stuttered out, doubling down on the cloud of the night before. Kylo wordlessly handed her a huge glass of water when she sat at the kitchen island, Han placing an enormous plate of eggs in front of her. 

There was a grimace on his face, a hand rubbing in circles on his lower back. Rey made to get up. His back pain was apparently getting worse. Kylo sat unmoving at her side.

“Are you okay?”

 _“Fine,”_  Han bit down a grunt, placing the frying pan in the sink. He played it a lot tougher since Kylo had come home. “There may be a part that’ll do the trick for that compressor, but it’s out of town. Way out of town.”

Rey shrugged, a strip of bacon hanging out of her mouth. “No big deal.”

“Figured we’d stop somewhere for lunch.”

She nodded, chewing noisily, and barely flickered her eyes to Kylo. “Want to come?”

Han’s mouth twisted, as though he knew the answer and he didn’t really want to hear it. It wasn’t a tempting offer, it was a lot of mechanical minutiae and driving in silence, something only suited to Rey and Han. 

“Sure,” Kylo answered casually, and even Rey looked surprised. 

* * *

“It’s never  _one_ errand,” his tone was knowing, and it made her laugh. Still, listening to Kylo instead of Han arguing with a salesperson over the plating on a certain type of pipe felt like she was screwing around during class. This was for the house, not the Falcon, and was in a hardware superstore, not the greasy mechanic shop where Han was able to find that part with a great deal of arm-twisting. And Kylo was bored, unlike her, and made his impatience known. Pacing the length of the aisle, fiddling with the control panel of a driving lawn mower, lifting the lids of all the grills. 

She glanced back at his father, who was apparently doubling down on his assertion with an underpaid employee. When she looked back, Kylo was halfway gone. 

“I’ll be in Gardening,” he tossed over his shoulder, “Come on, Rey.”

She followed, slipping through the displays of light fixtures glowing radiant around her. Kylo didn’t even look back to see if she was coming. He led her to a porch swing with a crisp red canopy and took a beleaguered seat upon it, holding it steady with his long legs for her to flop down at his side. 

“Is this where the cool kids sit?”

The swing rocked gently, his knees hinging to guide the motion to prevent it from jerking them around. That would have upset her already nervous stomach. This felt nice.

He hid a smirk behind his hand. “This is where I would spend Sunday errands. Usually with a book. I’m an embarrassment.”

She hit her shoulder against his. “Everything interests me, mostly. But I’m pretty easy to please.”

“You look overwhelmed in these stores. Like a kid in a toy shop.”

She shrugged. “It’s…where you go when you have a home, I guess. The idea sort of terrifies me. You think about fixing a sink, and the idea of  _having_  a sink…you probably think this is the most pathetic thing you’ve ever heard.”

He shook his head, his thumb coming across his scar for a moment.

“Upkeep,” he agreed with truly committing to the statement, eyebrows raised. “Because it’s falling apart around you. You get the dream home and find out it has termites and a quaintly antiquated septic tank.”

“God, you’re morbid.”

He lowered his voice, flickering with amusement;

“And yet when I ask you to come: you crawl.”

His fingers twisted idyly at the clasp of the necklace tucked under her clothes, the dangling chain at the base of her neck. 

She shook her head, but had the grace to laugh when he shot her a heated look. “Build me a house.”

“Is that all it takes? To house and feed you and you’re mine?”

“No,” she glared at him. “It’s the game I play by myself when we’re here. I build myself a house. So you can play too this time. Build me a house.”

* * *

“Kitchen.”

He gave the  _Mesa Red_  swatch in her hand a dirty look. “Bedroom.”

“Too intense. No one can relax in a red bedroom.”

“It’s intimate. Womb-like.” 

She plucked up one of the green tones, dropping it back with a wrinkle of her nose. 

“I  _hated_  that red light in your bedroom, it’s like a brothel.”

He reached past her for something gray. 

“You’re the one who switched out the lightbulb, aren’t you? It didn’t burn out while I was gone. You got rid of it.”

 _“Blue_  bedroom,” she blurted out, because she had a habit of throwing things out of her mouth to prevent lies. She had told Han it burned out after the first two weeks, and was swapped for a normal one. Kylo had complained about this when he reclaimed his room, she said nothing as Han insisted it was impossible to find another red lightbulb. 

He smirked at her. 

“Blue kitchen.”

“Your  _parent’s_  kitchen is blue.”

“Slate blue. This is cobalt.”

“I like the red with the copper finishing, copper also has a better warranty.”

He smacked her ass with the fan of colors in one hand. “Then copper is better contrasted with the cobalt.”

"It's too modern."

He snorted. "I'm building you the house. You _buy_ a rustic house, you don't build one. So yeah, it's going to be modern."

She crossed her arms. “It’s a house  _for_  me.”

He leaned back against the paint counter, where an employee was watching their sparring with rapt attention, as though Rey and Kylo were about to bang in the aisle and then order two of everything.

“I don’t get to live in it?”

“You can visit,” she held up a gradient of mint green. “Bedroom.”

“That’s a food color. That should be the kitchen one. The red-”

 _“Your_  room can be Mesa Red.”

“I can’t stay in your room when I visit?” his voice was low, teasing.

He kept a healthy distance, because even though Han could spend hours in these stores, it was risky when he could appear at any moment. She noticed him craning his neck to check the neighboring aisles every few minutes. He was actually taking it seriously. Protecting her from Han finding out. 

She shrugged. “Maybe I’ll stay in your room.”

“Even if it’s such a horrible color?”

“I didn’t say it was horrible, I wanted my  _kitchen_  to be that color. Mesa Red is a food color. Kind of.” She had no idea what she was saying, but she said it with confidence, even as he laughed at her. Foods  _were_  that color, sometimes.

“You should  _not_  be in the suburbs.”

She shuffled the stack of swatches into a neat pile, not looking at him. As if she didn’t know. 

“Thanks.”

She dropped a few of her swatches neatly in their corresponding decks. Putting them, and the pieces of their game, away. He sighed.

“Easy, Martha Stewart. It’s a compliment.”

“If you knew what I came from, the suburbs would feel like heaven.”

Kylo shrugged. It was times like this she both felt so close and so far from Ben. Ben would be more sympathetic; but he definitely wouldn’t understand as well. Ben’s demons in her heaven had made Kylo. 

"I saw some of your drawings," Rey didn't look at him. "There was a notebook in your room. You're really good, at the artsy stuff. Better than me."

They were talking about Ben now. 

He shook his head, instead of putting the cards back in their corresponding place, he just left the paint swatches in a stack at the top of the color display. "Not anymore."

"What do you mean?"

He held out his hands, which had always been tense and twitchy, but the way they jumped and shook startled her. "Too shaky. Been that way since the accident. And during withdrawal, I had tremors unlike anything I've ever felt and I've never felt... _normal,_ since then. It's a lot to overcome."

Something in Ben that was honest and truly dead.

"I'm sorry," she murmured.

He gave her a softer look. "You actually help with that. I feel steadier around you. And not just because you're drunk in shoes you can't walk in."

She groaned, punching his arm. 

The only thing there to save her from her heart shattering was that Han wandered to the edge of their aisle, looking pathetically out of place in a hardware store for the first time she’d ever seen, when he caught them standing in front of paint swatches. A pair of them. The rare time he had been the odd one out of the three since Kylo came home. At least, knowingly. 

There was a grimace on his face, and for a moment of pure horror Rey thought he figured it out, but instead his hand fell to his spine. His face twisted in pain. She stumbled over to him. 

“Are you okay?”

“It acts up,” Han grit out, waiting for a moment to pass. That was the only reassurance she had. He was bearing the pain like he knew in a moment, it would go away. Then his face relaxed. He didn’t look at his son. His son didn’t look at him. "Too much dancing."

Rey smiled and took her place at Han’s side, asking about the warranty on the pipe and chattering away, Kylo left behind. Kylo was a fantasy. She wanted to keep living in it. But this was reality, and this was security, and she could not fuck this up to the family that mattered to her. 

* * *

Lunch was a tired affair, after the splitting of wills at the hardware store. Kylo sat in the backseat, Rey in the front, a strange hierarchy that was both automatic and terrifying.

"Did you guys do this a lot, before?"

She noticed dual winces. 

"Yeah," Han said carefully, glancing at his son in the rearview. "Back when we had the Falcon. Most weekends after soccer games. Ben got bored easily, though, so when he was old enough to have an opinion i just brought Chewie, could take as long as I needed then."

Kylo's breath hissed out of his nose, but he didn't respond. 

They stopped and got Thai food and Rey ended up shoveling half of her food onto both of their plates, her only means of placation. Kylo ate what he was given automatically, even if it smeared into the sauce on his dish so the flavors had to be somewhat muddled. Han sampled the things she handed him, but he didn’t seem to know what she was doing. 

“Poe called.” Kylo’s voice carried from the landline in the kitchen when they returned. Rey thunked the heavy bag in her arms accidentally against the doorframe, Chewie diving at her in greeting.

Somewhat sadistically, Kylo smirked as he pressed the  _play_  button on the answering machine; Poe’s voice filled the kitchen, sparing her no privacy. She flinched, but tried to train her face to blankness. 

_“Hi Rey. It was really nice meeting you this week. I’d love it if we could get together sometime. Would you maybe want to go see a movie this weekend? If not, we can maybe get dinner. Either way, let me know. This is Poe Dameron, by the way.”_

“Sounds reasonable,” Han’s mouth twisted up as he lifted the contents of his bag onto the kitchen table. “Just let me know when you’re expected home, before I break out the shotgun.”

Rey laughed, but already this felt like she was being pried open, Kylo violating a boundary. She had a date. That was a  _thing;_  it could be quantified by something like a  _calendar,_  it was real because it had a  _voicemail_ on a  _phone._ She had that sundress from Target she still hadn't worn anywhere. This was her becoming a person: normal. Did he want her in this house at his beck and call forever?

“He works with Leia. I  _highly_  doubt he’d try anything funny with me.”

“Eh, he probably knows you’re kind of impermanent here.”

She set her palms on the marble countertop, not justifying Kylo’s words with even a look in his direction. Even if it fucking cut to the bone. 

“Enough out of you.” Han snapped, and it was strange, seeing a man in his thirties cowed by this so easily. It was the most fatherly she’d seen Han since his son came back, dipping into a negative extreme. Kylo’s jaw was tight. But she couldn’t really feel bad for him. 

“You okay?” Han put a hand on her shoulder as he passed her on the way to the sink. Her throat felt dry. 

“Yeah,” she said quietly, and got a glass from the cabinet; an action that was beginning to feel too familiar. She'd orbably done it hundreds of times at this point. It was eerie, the rhythm of something she never thought she’d get used to. Kylo watched her from across the kitchen, the reaction he wanted clearly not the one that he got.

He could be nurturing, kind even, in places where she was disadvantaged. Drunk, stoned, trying not to drown. He could be as charming as his father when he was in direct competition for her attention. 

She had forgotten, in the rush of the past few days, how cruel he could be. And in a break from her drunken blur from that night before, she remembered. Poe asking her out. Her tippy shoes on the marble floors as she exited the  _powder room,_  a phrase she had never heard before and caused more than a few people to laugh when she repeated it back incredulously, she just needed to find the _bathroom_. He caught her wrist with his easy smile, heroic given the circumstances of her throbbing feet, her fingers poised defensively over her lips as she spoke. The words didn’t come out through the normal process of thinking then speaking; they were just out. 

“We could see a movie or something, I’m in town for the rest of the week.”

Rey nodded, a smile breaking through her confused expression. She’d never been on a date, if this even was one. For that alone, she wanted to go. She wanted the most bland version of what that evening could be, to say that she did it. 

“I’d like that a lot, actually.”

Poe was confident, confident enough he didn’t turn at the sound of shoes down the hall. But she looked over his shoulder, only to see Kylo slipping back into the ballroom, not happy,  _not okay,_  with her whatsoever. 

* * *

Han’s back, he claimed from the dancing, was acting up for the rest of the week. Kylo was altogether uninvolved in the obvious amounts of pain he was in, but Rey was a constant companion. Flitting in and out of the room trying to keep him amused from his chair. Trying to feed him (without cooking anything, day one she set off the smoke alarm and Kylo had to help her fan out the entire downstairs so the fire department didn’t show up) or help him in any way, to be useful. He waved her off, sick of her and everyone else, pretty early on in this week. 

Arrangements for her date were made for Saturday, Rey being panicked by the _newness_ of it, that she would go to the movies with Poe and Rose and Finn. A double date, like a coward, or like preteens trying to hide their dates from their parents by traveling in a pack. Kylo kept his distance, despite previous insistence he was fine with it. It was harder to force him into the room with his father. It was harder to make him do anything she asked, his difficult personality flaring up. 

She felt chills, not the sway of a chemically altered person but the red racing blood of someone dealing with a lot of rage. She could actually tell he was sober, really sober, because he was pissed and without an outlet. He spent more time at the gym, alone in his room, swearing under his breath at nothing as she passed him.  

Friday was the roughest day, Han unable to get out of bed for most of the morning and Rey trying to research something between calling an ambulance and doing nothing, because those two things were not options. Kylo didn't...help. Not that he could do much more than she could. It just made her feel more helpless. 

She doubled Han's pain medication when Kylo was out of the room, but she could tell he was twitchy from the sounds of pills rattling in a bottle. That bottle was hidden somewhere deliberately where Kylo couldn't find it. Rey was never meant to be 'the parent' in this household, but with Han's status threatened, it was the same queasy feeling of when he told her to rat out Kylo if he ever got drunk or high. It felt wrong, it felt like it didn't fit, she was supposed to find her place here and have nothing ever change. 

It was also a short day, Han went to bed early, but he was at least up and walking by mid afternoon, clearly very annoyed with the drama of his aging body. Chewie was spry, bounding around, as if overcompensating or anxious. 

Rey was unable to speak to the both of them by dinner, impatient and angry because this rift between father and son was getting to the point that she'd have to start hating them if they didn't fix it. Especially if she was the one aiding in making it worse. They'd ordered a pizza, but it was a delivery on a pathetic day so it hardly felt like a treat, it felt pathetic and defeated. They all chewed it in silence, tasteless and burning.

The sun was setting when Han tapped out for the evening, at the dinner table, already sluggish from the medication. When he stood up, Kylo finally spoke;

"I kind of want to get out of the house. I think Rey's making you nervous. We could go to a movie."

This felt like the only attempt at a remedy all day. Too little, too late in Rey's opinion.

"You go ahead," Han pushed in his chair. Rey was watching every step like he was going to collapse at any point, even if he'd been out of bed and functioning for hours.

Kylo was tossing out paper plates, breaking down the pizza box. "Rey, give me a hand."

"I want to make sure-"

"I'm fine," Han insisted for the thousandth time. "You two should be able to catch an Eight O'Clock showing if you leave soon. You fine with walking?"

"It's only a few blocks, Rey," Kylo made eye contact with her for the first time in days. "Is that alright?"

She was annoyed with the both of them for trying to diffuse her, not trying to handle the actual problem. But Kylo had been so defensive about the driving thing, she needed to prove she was _okay with it._ "Yeah, I can walk," she said tersely. "Let me get my purse. You can clean up, Ben."

She changed out of her sweaty tee shirt into a plum tank top, tied her hair up and washed her face. The best way to describe how she felt was raw but clean. She didn't want to go. But Han looked really, really tired of looking at her after that day, and it hurt, but she knew to some extent it was that he didn't want to need her help, and he had this morning. She needed to give him some space, because her position here was still precarious. 

It was dusty blue outside when she and Kylo slid out the front door, him in a white shirt and leather jacket, her in the bomber jacket she'd gotten on her own with Rose a few weeks ago. They kept their hands in their pockets, didn't speak, their feet dragging obviously on the sidewalk as their meandering pace led them to the shopping complex that held the theater. She'd be going there with Poe tomorrow. It felt like the ultimate way of tripping at the starting line. 

"What do you even want to see?"

The first time they spoke was in the ticket line. He closed his eyes. He was the one who wanted to go out, he could act like he could at least tolerate her-

"I don't know, pick something."

She selected a mindless action movie. He accepted. She had a feeling they were just going to stew, and not watch it, instead of stewing and not watching something at home. He paid for tickets, and for popcorn, but in a way that felt less like a gesture and more like he was micro-managing. With a sigh, he asked her if there was anything she wanted.

Her hand slid under his jacket, placed under his shoulders. "For you to calm down."

He took a few deep breaths, sliding his credit card to the teenager barely paying them any mind as he topped off the sodas. She felt the tension in his back slowly go lax.

"Are you okay?"

"There will be bad weeks, with me," he looked at the sticky floor. "Maybe longer. It's good of you keep your distance. It's smart. I'm sorry."

She rested on her elbows at the counter beside him. The smell of popcorn was too tempting, she swiped a few kernels from the bucket awaiting payment. "Apology accepted, if you buy me some peanut butter cups."

Han wasn't there, but there weren't any rules about what they could do in public. At least, any that mattered when he leaned forward to kiss her, gently, on the lips. "Done."

When they sat down in the theater, it was full enough to feel comfortable escaping into a crowd but not crowded enough to feel alone. His knees took up space, long legs bent to accommodate his body into the seat. She felt tired, rested her head on his shoulder as they quietly ate popcorn before the trailers started. She thought this was normal, this was just what families do when they have a rough day and kind of want to kill each other, until he slid his fingers around her hand, and squeezed, and-

"Oh my god."

"What?" his tone was defensive. He already knew what she had just figured out. 

"You _stole_ my first date."

He bit back a laugh, the first she'd seen from him for a few days. He just kept eating popcorn for a few seconds. "That's only if _you_ consider this a date."

All this 'it's only that way if you make it that way' bullshit was really starting to piss her off. It was like pushing her off a cliff and saying it was gravity's fault. That and his expression told her he totally did this on purpose.

"I'm literally coming here tomorrow with Poe," she sank down in her seat, as though someone in the audience would recognize her tomorrow. "God. So you _are_ jealous."

His shoulders shook a little from contained laughter. "Not really threatened by my mother's bitch. But, if that's your type, more power to you."

"You couldn't let _him_ be my first date," she hissed, her arms crossing, "You had to sweep in and take it. You are such a dick."

"You're smiling."

_"No."_

"You are," he squeezed her knee, and she kicked his foot, covering her mouth with her hand. 

"It's only because it's laughable that you are that much of a bastard."

He slid his arm around her as the lights dimmed. "I just wanted to make sure it was nice."

Kylo kissed her ear. "And I owe you. For even...still being here."

"I owe your dad a lot," she looked down at her lap, but he didn't pull away. And in that time, she gained courage. "And you know. I care about all of you. Including you. Especially you, sometimes."

He kissed her under her jaw. "You made everything better. I wouldn't still be in this house if it weren't for you."

That was a lot of pressure, especially being dubbed his new addiction. One he could seemingly kick depending on his mood.

She didn't want to watch the movie to begin with, but when the trailers were done and he popped the button of her jeans open during a car chase scene at the beginning, she couldn't even remember the title. She let the plot go with a soft sigh when his fingers slid home in the darkness. 

She felt his teeth against her ear when he whispered:

"Dameron can take you out. It doesn't mean you're not my girl."

* * *

Walking back felt more like a date than the trip there had, but he'd found his rhythm at that point and it was proving to be a pretty good one. She hadn't exactly dressed for the occasion like she'd planned on. But this meant she'd go on _two_ dates this week. Even if one was shaping up to look like it would be pretty fake now.

"My ears are ringing," she shook her head, the flush of her cheeks cooled by the night air. Her jacket would make her overheat, she held it in her arms. 

"Gunfight with surround sound will do that to you."

Rey wasn't sure if it was the speakers or the three orgasms she'd had during the movie's climax. She went off about the same time a bomb strapped to a speeding jet ski did. 

He slid his hand in hers. It was dark, but it was a few blocks and the suburban paranoia about crime made for really consistent lighting over sidewalks. 

He was quiet, but it was a different quiet. A mellow kind, his hand in hers so gentle. She realized that maybe he felt as helpless as she did today. That this was his way of trying to help. That it mattered, even if he didn't know how to show it.

"How long were you planning to steal Poe's thunder?"

He smirked. "Been plotting it the moment I saw him look at you."

"I'm still going."

He laughed, an arm coming around her shoulders. "You should. I'm sure comparison won't do him any favors."

His control issues. Not just that it couldn't be with him. But it just couldn't be _bad,_ and if he was in control, he could prevent that. He didn't trust Poe to do that. Compulsive. Slightly sociopathic. Kind of sweet. 

Cicadas and crickets started to melt into the periphery of her hearing, the dulled pulse of the film score melting away. There was a tickle of fireflies against her arms. She stopped Kylo a few blocks over to spin him towards her, overcome, and pressed a kiss to the base of his throat. Because she could. Right out in the open. He groaned softly, touching up and down her arms. 

"I loved my first date."

It was what he needed to hear. His half-hard cock pressed purposefully against her belly.

"Doesn't have to end here."

When they reached their block, he pulled her around back to the garage. It was a smart move for privacy's sake, but it was a weird place to christen between them. He had intentions for her tonight, clearly.

Han's car was parked dutifully in its place, and waiting on the other side of the workshop was the Falcon, rusted and still, but with promise. Even she was surprised that he didn't immediately kiss her. Instead, he inspected the cars, half-illuminated. He must have been too anxious to notice the Falcon when he was here when they stole the car. Or when Hux brought him by for the lunch before his release. Seeing it again was affecting him, more than she ever expected. 

"Jesus," he approached the Falcon cautiously. "This is where you guys pretend that real life is a Bruce Springsteen song?"

"It's where we _work,_ Kylo."

He let out a appreciative whistle at the state of their restoration. "It's looking like the old one. Better, even. Great monument to the past, because this thing'll never run."

His tone was a little snide, and she cocked her hip defensively. "We're almost there."

"And then what? You'll have the car that embodies arrested development?"

He smiled when he said it, but he softened up when she rested herself on the couch. He sat beside her. 

"Han has a funny way of looking at the past."

"He misses that car," she shrugged. "It represents the good times with him."

She could understand longing. It was herself at depth. Kylo regarded her with equal caution he did the car. 

"It's what fucked up his back."

"What?"

She glanced at him. They hadn't turned on the overhead lights, just a few of the standing work lamps with their yellow, honeyed light. All she saw on his side of her was his profile and then the dark. 

"The Falcon got fucking decimated. Head on collision. His spine took the worst of it, it'll always be traumatized but it's a miracle he can still walk. Han didn't tell you?"

"He...implied something bad happened to it. But he didn't say how. It was an accident in the Falcon?"

"Yeah."

His hands drummed nervously on his knees. There was a reason he was telling her this, but she had to ask the right question to get to it. She might have known. All they had was the darkness, the fuzzy edges shifting to finally break through this mystery. 

"Ben?"

His breath _whooshed_ out of his nose, but he nodded. 

"Why does he want to go back to a car where he got so hurt? Why would he want to drive it again?"

He chewed his lower lip for a minute, shaking his head. She took his hand. 

"Because he wasn't the one driving the car."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am mad at both of them for not considering that Home Depot Date Rey's actual First Date, because it was perfect.


	5. when you’ve outgrown a lover

_“You were driving?”_

She watched his face as he nodded.

“And Han got hurt?”

 _“Yeah,”_ it was a dry little word, so unlike his crisp, careful ones that came before it.

It was strange, sitting beside him like this. At the movie, it felt more safe, pretending. Now there was a knowing, a terrifying sense of privacy and space, and it scared her. She wanted to be back in that movie theater. Safe in darkness. Pretending to be a normal girl. Not hiding in the garage of the house she’d never belong in and the man who’d never be hers.

“And you did too.”

He shook his head automatically. “I walked out fine.”

“But...your scar?”

This time he nodded again, rubbing a hand anxiously up and down his leg.

Rey tried to keep her breathing even. She had not consented to the solving of _this_ mystery. It was forced on her before she was ready. And it was because she had teased it, turned it on, gotten it to look back at her.

This was Ben becoming Kylo. This was them being the same thing no matter how hard she tried to press her weight against just the one she trusted. This was why one was never far away from the other. He was always both, a complicated cocktail of the things he regretted and could have been. Of what he would be.

“What happened?”

He looked at her like he owed her the truth, when this man did not owe her a single thing. He wet his lips as if preparing himself. For what, she didn’t know. Something bad.

“It was during a burnout phase for me. Leia basically forced him to go and visit me, in the shithole I was living. Obligatory visits, nagging to get my life together. He’d pay for lunch and we’d ignore what was really happening. He let me drive the Falcon sometimes. You know, old times.”

He let out a humorless laugh, looking at his knee instead of her. “Ended up being the last time.”

“You weren’t sober.”

He looked at her knowingly. Like he expected more from her than even having to ask it. It made her skin prickle, this once doting man know looking pointed and smug at her.

He sneered at her for thinking the better of him, _of Ben._ Her worship of someone who wasn’t even here to tell the tale. The boy whole removed himself from this conversation. Kylo was at least having it.

“Rey, I was _obliterated.”_

It almost made sense. It almost connected the pieces. With Han being unable to see things, unable to deal with what was happening before his own eyes. The ignorance, the carelessness, the longing to get to be casual with his son again. Accepting it at face value; Ben fucked up and they were all grappling with it, could have been easy for her.

Should have been easy for her.

But Rey stared at the car like she was watching Ben drive it into this couch, destroying their bodies, their tentative bond, for Han to find in smithereens in the morning. And it didn’t nudge itself into place, into making sense just yet.

“Did Han know?”

“I’m good at hiding things,” he shook his head, face sort of scrunched up in a dubious expression, but Rey felt her heart stammer. “I’d been doing it since high school. He had no idea.”

She could imagine it. Muddy shoes in hand, sneaking back up the stairs while the TV droned on with some 1980’s comedy about two buffoons traveling across the US, notably the Midwest, Han watching with glazed eyes. A high that can only be beaten by the rush of adrenaline to not be caught as he closed the door of his room. The sinking guilt that he had not yet been caught so this would only keep going, keep getting worse. Han oblivious, waiting for the past. Leia, busy, Leia, focused, Leia, always expecting more.

She knew how to sneak around because she’d seen him do it; _she’d been doing it._

Leia, his mother, who missed nothing. Han, his father, who cared _so fucking much_ on the inside that Rey thought he was going to collapse to his knees one day from the pain he was so careful to hide. And Ben, this piece of broken little family, who had parents who loved him and a room up in that house and a dad to pass him the keys with a smile and just pray that everything was going to turn out fine for him.

Kylo had accepted something she could not. Her stomach was coiling with discomfort and pain, to the point he cast his eyes sideways at her to examine her expression, as so much time had passed with her being silent.

“Rey?”

 _“Bullshit,”_ she spat out, shaking her head. “You’re his son.”

At this, he did look at her. Dead on. Confused.

 _What’s wrong_ seemed to poise on his tongue, and she answered without question.

_“He let you drive.”_

“I like to think he wouldn’t recklessly endanger us-”

“It’s more complicated than that,” it was her turn to pause and find her words. “To pretend nothing is wrong with this family. To go back and pretend that things were fine. He let you drive anyway because he wanted you to be able to handle it.”

“We are not a family, Rey.”

“You are. You are both just…” she grit her teeth, shutting her eyes to the illuminated man beside her, “ _so stubborn._ And you, you’re using me as this wedge to keep damaging your relationship with him because I bet you two _never_ talked about it.”

“He had no idea,” now Kylo’s tone was defensive. “He had no clue. It would be too stupid of him to just toss me the keys if he knew. He didn’t give it a second thought. He couldn’t have known, Rey.”

 _Obliterated,_ Kylo had said. She remembered one of the earlier days, watching Kylo cook with swear words like pinpricks stabbing through the room. He got so frustrated when things didn’t go his way. Both her and Han, looking on warily, Kylo chopping carrots and being very anxious as they sat very still. Han’s tired, creased face. He watched. He was looking for something then. He worried.

He had known.

She held her tongue to prevent the cruelty of making him accept what she now knew. Han didn’t stop drinking. Han didn’t fight back against Leia, declare Kylo only fit for a sober public event like a park opening or a volunteering for charity. He never said _I was wrong, Ben._

“You’re still acting out,” she looked down at her knees, “through me.”

There was a displeased noise to her side.

“I am fucking you because I wanted you since I first saw you,” a heavy arm slung around her shoulders, as if he predicted her instinct to run. “Rey. you’re doing to opposite. Stop using _my_ relationship with my father to further your standing here.”

She slithered out from under his grasp, her face white. “What?”

Kylo sighed, leaned back to his corner of the couch. “You want me and him to be cool so he doesn’t blow up about us. If we’re aren’t all one big happy family, you can’t stay forever. That would interfere with your plan,” his thumb idly stroked some threads coming loose from the couch. He couldn’t look at her as he said _“You want me to marry you.”_

 _“What?”_ She leapt back, her legs tangling up and unsteady in the dark. He watches her, illuminated. Calm. Unafraid.

“I know what you want, Rey,” his voice was quiet, and he honestly seemed hurt by her instead of trying to insult her. “You want me to marry you, build you a big house and keep you nice and safe inside it. When I was Ben. Even when I’m me. Doesn’t matter. It’s not _about_ me. I know it’s not romantic to you, or that I’m not _the one_ you so desperately need as a husband. It’s not about _us_ . It’s about trying to create this family out of _stuff,_ and that was never enough for this family.”

“I don’t want you to marry me.” She crossed her arms, staring at the Falcon. Wanting to go back. Wanting to wind so much back.

He laughed. “You know what I mean. First you have my father, but he’s not going to live forever and you need to think like a survivor. Marry the guy who might stand to inherit this, if _you_ don’t,” His smirk left his face, his brown eyes burning sincere in the yellow light. “I’d do it too, if I knew it would ever satisfy you. Call my fucking bluff. Twist my arm about it, and I’d do it and guess what? It would _never_ make you happy enough. This is how it starts. It’s always about more.”

The addict telling her that it will never end. The stuff you need to fill the void. She’d never had _stuff_ before.

She tightened her jaw at him, she didn’t like when he was right. She and Han had trusted he was too selfish to observe them, too jagged to find purchase in their lives. Kylo wasn’t a baby. He wasn’t Han’s child, or Rey’s fucking fantasy. This was the first time he let her know that had bothered him. The way they saw him. Thought they were safe from his perception. As though he had lower standing, didn’t matter, interfered with their perfect family.

“That’s how you think. That’s not about how _I_ think.”

He shook his head.

“You think of the best case scenario. You try and make it okay all the time as quickly as possible. Even when you’re in pain. Even when you’re vulnerable. You just keep working for him and forgiving me and letting me crawl to your bed for whatever fucked up reason makes you think this is how to keep us around.”

“I let you…” she looked at the floor, “I let you because I wanted it too.”

He swallowed, looking away as well. “But you had your reservations. Did you think it would be worse if you didn’t-”

“Stop.” at this she put her foot down. “Do not twist this the way Han will. I did not fuck you out of desperation. Or do you think I’m some hoodrat junkie trying to fuck her way out of her problems?”

“No,” he snapped back. _“No,”_ softer. “I just don’t always believe you could really want me.”

Rey wanted things now. It had really gotten away from her.

Of course, there was the Falcon, and her hoarding tendencies, and all the crap Han quietly moved into boxes and then to the curb that she had stuffed into the car at the dump, crap piled up to the middle of the windows. Fast Food toys and old clothes and shopping bags filled with stuff. It meant nothing. She’d forgotten she’d even spent all those months hoarding it into the car, or that it was gone.

Because it didn’t matter. There were worse things to lose.

Kylo leaned forward.

“Now are you going to tell me why you feel so empty?”

She shook her head. The lights on his face buzzed, and that was the only sound in the garage.

“Why can’t you sleep at night, Rey?”

She didn’t want him to see her cry.

She left Kylo without an answer and walked across the dark yard back to the house. This was the first night in months that was uncomfortably cool. Summer was ending.

Kylo left her alone that night.

It was why she fit in here, in her awkward way. Solos were good hiders.

* * *

The summer had been the best of her life.

Barbecues, clean sheets, learning to swim, walking to the park with Han and Kylo to kick around a soccer ball. Movie nights. New, strange vegetables Kylo coated in foreign sauces. Reminding Han to take his medication. Kissing in Ben’s bed. Fixing the Falcon. Watching soccer games while Kylo stroked the hair at the nape of her neck. Cuddling Chewie and driving for hours with Han and sweating and coating her skin in motor oil and touching Kylo and having him touch back.

These were not memories quantified by things. She had to trust them to exist in her mind for the rest of her life when she would inevitably resume. But resuming her shitty life felt farther away, and yet somehow closer, with every passing day.

The summer ended with her first real date: the first, which to her would always be Home Depot picking color swatches, and the second, and then the third.

* * *

She didn’t want this to be her first date. She wanted it to be _a_ date, but she hadn’t wanted to pretend she’d done this before, or was more used to this than she was. To know what to do, because she did it before.

But running the same track as the night before was a weird way to be used to this already; Poe’s arm easily around her shoulders, chatting up Rose and Finn, who kept nudging her behind his back as if to tell her it was all going super well.

Maintaining the lie for everyone was making her sick.

It was easier to be physical now, in public, as though her body craved it in all the months of hiding. Like Kylo’s touch became a phantom, whenever she left that haunted house. Her chin rested on Poe’s shoulder as he ordered from the crappy burger place they selected for dinner, his head tilted back to read the menu board overhead. His hands closed over her hands, which had somehow rested themselves on his stomach when her arms automatically wrapped around his waist. She was spoiling herself, acting on impulses. She couldn’t do this before. Poe was warm, it felt good. She never got to be a teenager pondering a menu of identical-looking burgers, the prospect of build-your-own too towering for even her own mind. A house, a burger, it was all such fantasy. She worried about Poe feeling her breathing, labored and longing, over the food promised above her head.

Finn and Rose were high-fiving at the apparent closeness of Rey and her date.

But she couldn’t know for sure if she really wanted this. Or if she was just so tired of hiding, of not getting to be normal, of being a part of a cycle in a family that felt like her but would never _be_ hers. If she was acting out as the false daughter, hoping her father would scold her for rushing into brisk intimacy.

If the teenage movie theater attendants recognized her from the night before, they gave no indication, and Rey let Poe hold her hand, let him drive her home, let him kiss her in his car until the thought of Han waiting up for her propelled her from the seat and back down the front walk. It was nice. Poe, while liberal with his pours at fancy dinners, was by no means a bad guy. He was a good first date.

Too bad she’d already had one of those.

Kylo had seemed to understand her intrinsically; she found the ticket stubs from last night in her jacket pocket that morning, like he knew she’d care to have something to touch that meant it really happened. She didn’t keep her ticket with Poe. There was no desire to peel the receipt out of his hand to show he bought her popcorn. Didn’t nurse her soda with a languid Barbie-wrist like it was a prop, she flung it into the trash when the ice melted into watered-down-syrup.

Poe’s date was more about trust in the things that didn’t exist in solid form, impossible to save but for her own mind. The sun hitting freckles on his cheek as she watched him from the passenger side of the car. He threw fries at her when she sparked back in conversation, her jokes teasing, and the explosion of them as they bounced off her arm was not something that could be swept up and put away in a jar labelled “Laughter.” A smile, a hand brushing over her bare knee, the tone of a reply.

She had to trust these things. Memory. She tried.

Memory had always been physical. Because the emotions hurt too much. Metal, glass, sand, all tied her to physical moments.

A hug couldn’t. A kiss couldn’t.

Ben’s kisses, at best, could tie her to the present. Kylo fucking her ensured she wasn’t thinking about the past, or the future. Just him. It felt perfect because of that.

The automated lights turned on when she passed their sensors. They used to make her jump back, like she was an intruder. She didn’t even notice them now.

Someday it would be normal. Someday she would not have to try so hard to fit into this world. Someday there would be a place for her in it.

* * *

Han was at the kitchen counter when she returned to the house. Nursing a beer. There was a watermarked engine manual splayed out in front of him. Not the same make of the Falcon, but he had found it at a yard sale and found the same engineer had designed this model, so maybe there would be clues about that fucking compressor.

He was waiting up for her. It was the balance of comfort and disappointment she was becoming acutely intimate with. Aching for him to fix things with his son, but unable to say a word for all she was doing to further damage it. She smiled weakly at him.

“You have fun?” He seemed to instantly regret the phrasing, a grimace twisting his face.

She rested her hip on the counter, scratching Chewie’s head as the dog nudged her stomach with his nose. “Yeah. He’s nice.”

“Yeah, nice men are a way to stay out of trouble,” Han rolled his eyes, “Can’t say I disagree with that, with you under my roof.”

She smiled, her hair falling over her face as she focused on the dog’s ears. “I don’t know if I’m going to see him again. He’s like, travelling a lot. It’s not the end of the world. I just want to feel…”

She tilted her head back, cheeks puffing up with a sigh she held in. Then let out through her nose. Like a yoga breath.

 _“Normal,”_ she shrugged.

Han let out a wry chuckle. “ _Normal_ is just information so unspecial your brain doesn’t write it into memory. You think things will be better when they’re normal, that you can’t be hurt by anything, that nothing bad can happen to you. Normal isn’t safe, Rey. It can’t save you from the things you _will_ remember.”

“Like what?” she asked quietly. She already knew. But Han didn’t know that. Han was drunk. It was clear. It was unfair of her to use this to her advantage, to press into the things she knew he hid as she stood sober at his side. She did anyway. If he was fucking sober for his goddamn son, she wouldn’t be able to do this to him.

He looked into the sink, she half expected a crocodile to crawl out if it was so damn interesting to him. The room must be spinning, to him, if he was focusing on still points. This wasn’t even about Poe anymore. She had a feeling few conversations in her future would be, petering off until he was never mentioned again. A nice guy, a good date. Nothing she’d remember.

 _Pain,_ she sensed from Han, staring at him now. You remember pain.

“I think I try to make things normal so they can stop hurting me. Even the bad things.”

Han nodded at this, his brow shaking in agreement: a quiver up and then down. She had hit a mark, mostly because she was carefully trying to hide she was talking about _him_ too.

Even though he had failed, even though he was flawed, it hit her then that she had never loved anyone this much in her life.

“We all do,” he took a sip from the bottle in his hand. It looked like it had been there a while, drunk very slowly. No condensation, no sweat. Lukewarm. Must taste like bile.

She knew the taste, it was rising to her tongue when she said goodnight and went to Kylo’s room.

* * *

Kylo had avoided her since the night before. Maybe proving he could. That he wasn’t going to make her be near him if she didn’t want to. That she had a choice.

This couldn’t be a conversation about him _making her_ unless she stopped wanting to. She didn’t stop. It seemed impossible.

If it was what she wanted, what did it matter?

Her knuckles wrapped on his closed door. It was silent on the other side. She heard the creak of a desk chair, he must be leaning back.

It was clear to her as she opened the door that the only other person she wanted to talk to about her date was Ben. The windows were open, there was a soft breeze. It was more movement in the tomb-like, still room that she had ever seen. Kylo had taken some air, needed it, clearly, and glanced up from the book in his hand as she slid into his room.

“How was it?”

She had smiled. She had put on her one dress that wasn’t picked out by someone else. She had eaten more food than was probably polite and talked about whatever she could that didn’t involve where she came from, which was proving to be increasingly difficult with everyone in her life. She stayed at the Solo house because Han at least didn’t give a shit.

Enabling, enabling everywhere.

“It was okay.”

And that devastated her, because being _normal_ was supposed to be amazing, it was all she ever wanted, and she suddenly didn’t care so much it was like a hole opened up beneath her and swallowed her up. Normal felt like nothing. Kylo sat up in his chair as she began to cry.

Someday she would have to stop feeling so much, stop feeling everything until it was hurting, pulling Kylo so close to feel all the pain and pleasure he could give her; but it was not tonight.

For once he was reasonable enough to understand her tears weren’t an excuse to get territorial, she was just disappointed. He crooned in the back of his throat and picked her up. His large hand cupped across the back of her neck when her legs squeezed around his waist.

“I’m sorry, Rey.”

“I don’t know why I’m upset. It’s not even that I don’t want to see him again,” she laughed against his neck when he made an annoyed sound, “It’s just...if I don’t feel anything, what’s the point?”

“You’re not interested.”

“I...don’t know that yet.”

He tilted her back to look in her eyes, that hand still supporting her neck. She had to relax into him dipping her away from his body, which took a minute, but she accepted his arms and trusted him to hold her up. They didn’t shake.

“You’re not interested. Don’t waste your time trying to make yourself be. You’re not deficient. It was just a nice date with someone you don’t feel much chemistry with. It happens.”

“I liked...parts of it.”

She could spend all the time in the world with Poe. It wasn’t something she regretted. He was smart, a good listener, charming and funny. It wasn’t about him. It just felt like she was _wasting,_ something a scavenging, homeless, optionless person felt immensely guilty over. Throwing a hot meal in the trash. Leaving a bed empty, waiting for someone who would never return.

He set her down on the edge of his bed. His hands worked his belt open before answering.

_“Uh huh.”_

“It wasn’t all bad.”

He glanced up from what he was doing, into her eyes.

“What parts did you like?”

She stared at the carpet. Those vacuum-cleaner lines were gone. They had been there even when she lived in this room. This room was lived in again.

“We kissed in his car. He’s a good kisser.”

“Good enough to _break curfew?”_

She and Han had joked about curfew being at nine, too scared to acknowledge that this situation was delicate and imposing rules seemed like madness. Rey was the good one, with Kylo in the house, and she was twenty, not sixteen, but Kylo was in his thirties and Han didn’t know Poe and there were conflicting emotions about who could set the boundary for that. And when they didn’t know what to do, they just made jokes.

She shrugged away from his thumb when it swiped over her bottom lip. “Are you mad?”

“No,” he shook his head, touching her again. Undeterred. This time along the tracks of tears down her cheeks. “I’m mad at myself. At the universe, because you deserve a good first date.”

“I had one,” she rested back on her elbows. Taking his closeness away from her face, and now bringing him, his hands, to the skirt riding up her legs. Her heel hooked behind his leg.

“Go back to pouting,” he stroked his hands up and down her thighs, “I want to fix it. I want to fuck it better.”

She shivered, clinging to his pillows as she lay back. The fresh smell of him, living in this room, was better than the stale one she worshipped in his absence.

“I wasn’t-”

“I know,” he glanced up at her after he dropped to his knees. “I’m an asshole, remember?”

They both heard steps on the stairs. Han going to bed. They stood in complete, unmoving silence, like deer in headlights, until he shut his bedroom door.

She spoke first, quietly.

“How was tonight for you?”

He tried to make an escape with his face between her legs, but she placed her hands on his cheeks to draw him up over her. Bare legs splayed out, skirt around her waist, over the covers. Like this was the second half of _their_ date.

“Was it hard?” she murmured after a swallow.

He nodded, his adam’s apple shifting with a thick swallow. “Is that what you need? For me to be able to let you go?”

“Are you trying to prove you don’t need me?”

Her fingers combed into his hair. They were talking as he was getting her underwear out of the way, lifting her skirt, unzipping his fly. They could still talk, it never faded or lost focus. Not anymore.

He kissed her above the wrench charm that had settled between her breasts. His fingers stroked her cunt, but there was an ache there that had been going on all night that made all of his touch ready her so quickly. 

“I’m not in a good place, and I was never...supposed to need you.”

“Neither was I.”

He laughed, closing his eyes. She continued to massage his scalp until he leaned into her touch. “You have nowhere to go but up. I ruined my fucking life. We’re passing while going in different directions, Angel. Don’t turn around. Not for me.”

“Don’t pretend this is over,” she pulled him down for his brow to push into hers. “Please. Not for you. You deserve more.”

He grunted in his throat, his cock nudging her wet lips.

“It’s not over for you either. Don’t stay here forever. It’ll ruin you like it did me.”

“Stop.”

“Don’t stay with the first people who want you just because your parents didn’t. Poe. Han. Even me.”

“I-” she shut her eyes as he slid home, clinging to him. She could only process the words once her toes stopped curling. “What?”

“ _We_ do want you. But don’t let that keep you here forever. I can...I can get my license back, we can get our own place, start over….I’ll even come with you to visit here for fucking family dinners with Leia and Han if you want. But don’t settle for this.”

His cock stuffed her, with her knees squished tight to her body, it was getting hard to think. She loved this. He was lying so close, not methodically fucking her, not fixing it. He was working her up. Making her desperate and overwhelmed. She clung to the one thing that still struck her as odd.

“What did you say, before?” Her voice was soft and weak. Breaking as it rose and fell. Maybe to the pace of his thrusts.

“Rey…”

_“About my parents?”_

He went still. Her hands cupped the back of his neck, not letting him move. She felt him pulse inside her and knit her eyes shut. She wasn’t strong enough to push him off, make him pull out.

“Ben, please.”

He lifted onto his elbows. There was something bad written all over his face. Guilt. Shame. It was jutting in between her ribs, causing the intense pain of anticipation.

Kylo tried to pull farther away, but she whined and locked him in place. He sighed. He carefully combed her sweaty hair out of her face. There was something deliberate in how he wet his lips before speaking. His eyes flickered to the pillow over her shoulder. 

“Leia hired a private investigator. Her brother. He’s discreet. He dug up...some stuff about your parents. At least, the wellness checks to where you lived in Jakku called in by neighbors. When you were little. And the missing persons declared after they just up and left. The last thing he found was when you were in your last foster home, and-”

Her eyes fluttered to the ceiling, and he moaned desperately, having lost her focus. 

“You knew.”

“You were living in our house, Rey, she took precautions.”

_“Han knew.”_

Ben _whined_ instead of answering, kissing her neck and chest in pure need to keep her soothed.

This betrayal felt worse, somehow. With Han. She had felt so safe with him. That she didn’t have to have any answers because he never asked. He accepted her truth and nothing more. He didn’t need to know anything else.

No, instead he knew everything she was trying to hide. All her pain, as she was pretending she was this magical detective poking around through all their pain. Piecing together a mystery. Lying to him about his son.

There was a fantasy she had, that she would tell him everything one day; and he would love and pity her and all she had been through, and that would make way to him permitting her love for his son. And then she would truly belong.

Instead he let her get behind the fucking wheel, just like Ben. Driving off towards belonging and never knowing she’d collide into an oncoming truck before she ever got there.

_“Do you know how essential this transition period to him? If he comes home and finds his bed has been given up to some twenty-year-old stranger, so help me-”_

They had fucking _vetted_ her before letting her stay one night longer with Ben under their roof. And Han knew.

She thought she was solving them.

Rey had just become their mystery.

Ben’s weight settled back on her. Her spine arched, she let out a choked moan. She didn’t care anymore about Han hearing.

“Let me fix it,” his voice was deadly, pleading with an intensity that did not offer any other option. He _needed_ this to be fixed. Compulsive. Obsessive. Self-destructive. He would _gut_ himself to fix this, she could feel it. She couldn’t help. _“Please.”_

A sob ripped out of her throat, her arms binding tight around him. Holding him there. In the present. Pinned.

“How can you fix it? You have a father who loves you, and gives a damn about you. I never did.”

He pushed her knee down into the mattress, opening her up. She fucked back, letting her hips roll against his as he spoke.

“We are just as broken, Rey. Han can’t even look at me.”

_“Then tell your father what you fucking need from him.”_

Kylo shook his head. His eyes were mean. He dipped lower to kiss her sweaty face. Shushing her. Trying to pretend he understood being nothing from nowhere. Because unlike her, he chose it.

There was only one way to be an addict from her world; a sharp decline into nothing. Vanishing off the streets, meaning death or jail. But it would be a part of a cycle that never ended. She’d seen it through the passing of familiar faces, the lines and the scars and the ones that just disappeared.

His addiction, and subsequent redemption; it fluctuated, it changed, he got worse before he got better and it was all about being a person over being in his own steady oblivion.

“I need _you,_ as you are. Without having to be anything else. Not when you’re pretending to be the perfect daughter. Just you.”

She couldn’t even say his name because she didn’t even know who she was with. Ben or Kylo. She loved them both without question. There was not one without the other. She accepted this, as she did him, into her body.

His hips snapped into hers, and she slid her feet frantically against the mattress to find purchase to arch up into him. God, she wanted to cry her way through this orgasm, feel everything. Fuck the past, and the future. The future was starting to look worse than her past.

A shout cracked out of her mouth, and he covered her lips with his wide palm. She shuddered and twitched as she came, and he was decent enough to tend to her needs throughout the shakes.

Her cumming so hard as he maintained his pace. The feeling of his arms around her. There was no receipt to this feeling, no proof of purchase, no commemorative plaque. To prove that it happened. To prove it had been this much.

_He took care of her. Maybe even loved her._

It was easy. But would it ever be enough?

“He’ll hear you,” he warned, muffling her cries.

“I don’t care,” she shook her head, holding him in place as he tried to pull away again. She couldn’t let him leave. “Let him.”

“Rey, he can’t find out like this.”

Kylo was patient. Kylo was controlled. Who was the one who couldn’t have enough, who could never stop?

_“I can’t do this anymore.”_

She went limp under him. Spiteful. Uncaring. He was tending to a full-on-tantrum. His hands were _shaking._ Poor Kylo, reining in enough impossible emotions for himself. No wonder he’d rather have her problems. She felt awful, making him handle this. But she was done. Done trying to belong. Done trying to run from this pain. Done lying.

He pressed his sweaty brow to her collarbone, out of breath. He was pulling his pants back up. “Do you really want to tell him?”

He was speaking very slowly and carefully. Dressing. Ending...something. She didn’t know what.

She shook her head, squirming out from underneath him. She curled in a ball on the other side of the bed, he spooned behind her, trying to keep her close.

“Not if you... _don’t care.”_

She couldn’t even say it.

He let out a frustrated sigh. “I fucking _care,_ Rey.”

“I don’t want you to-”

He cut off her before she walked back. “I want to be with you. That involves having to tell him eventually. Unless you were the one never seeing a future in this, with me.”

She always expected it would end before they had to tell Han. Sparing him the rupture between him and his son, maybe the last their shaky relationship could withstand. Having _both of them_ meant not having either of them forever. That was now impossible. She couldn’t see this ending. She wanted Kylo to stretch into her future, something she was never brave enough to think about.

“Rey,” Ben held her shoulders, trying to force her to calm down. “Rey, I can handle it. Do you want me to tell him?”

 _“I just can’t keep lying,”_ she hugged her knees to her chest. Han had trusted her. She had trusted him. Her face hung forward, brow to her kneecaps.

“Then we’ll tell him in the morning.”

She’d lose her nerve by morning. She gave a pathetic wail, trembling in the bed that had once been the safest place in the world.

_“No. Now.”_

Ben sighed, kissing her shoulders as they shook with sobs. He was quiet for a very long time. About halfway through the silence, she realized it was because he wasn’t going to say _no_ to her. She clung to his hand, breathing deeply as he had instructed her to.

 _“Okay,”_ he said finally. “It’ll be okay. Please, Rey. Wait here.”

She pulled on her underwear as he crawled out of bed. Straightened her clothes. 

The footsteps in the hallway made her heart stop as he went to his father’s room.

_“Dad?”_

There was a tone there, like a child who had a nightmare and was looking for somewhere safe to sleep. There was a startled noise from Han’s room. The motion of rumpled sheets. A fan switched off, what had been drowning out all of her cries. Who slept with a time-bomb like Kylo in the house wanting to _drown out_ the sound of what he could be doing? Kylo had kept from relapsing without _any_ help, and she never gave him credit for that.

“What?”

He did sound concerned. Scared. Ready to help.

She knew what he was going to hear. She didn’t deserve it.

Rey couldn’t breathe, curled up in Ben’s blankets. Inhaling the smell. Waiting to say goodbye.

“I need to tell you something.”

The whole mood of the house shifted. The doubt iced between father and son and she could feel it even in her warm bed.

Even for a second, making Han think that his son had betrayed him and relapsed _killed_ her. It was pain neither of them deserved to feel for even a moment. Ben didn’t betray Han.

Rey did.

Han swayed for a second in the tense silence, and Rey realized he really was _drunk._ From where Kylo was standing, he could probably smell it. It killed her, that he had to face this. That he was doing it for her.

“I can’t deal with this pain anymore,” Ben took a deep breath when Han let out a concerned grunt, “Rey is being torn apart. I know what I have to do for her and I don’t know if I have the strength to do it. Will you help me?”

There was a pause. Han tried to step in, tell him things were fine, but Kylo pushed through.

“Rey and I...we’re together. We have been for a while. She’s terrified of you hating her over it.”

There was only a hum in response from his father. Rey crept to the door to see his face. It was too painful to look straight at.

Han’s face was twisted in some kind of shock, denial, and acceptance in the span of a minute. She saw him come to terms with his grief the only way he knew how; all at once, and then never again.

Kylo hadn’t even moved, like he hadn’t dealt a fatal blow to his father’s trust, to Rey’s standing in the universe, and to the relationship he would have to Han for the rest of his life. Rey wanted to scream, but she could only creep backwards into Ben’s room.

“No matter what happens, don’t punish Rey. She’s a better kid to you than I ever was. She tries so hard to make you proud of her. I don’t deserve your pride. But Rey does.”

Han shook his head and put his hand on Ben’s face. “I promised your mother I’d bring you home. I always wanted you to _come home.”_

The room was already saved for someone else. There was no place for her in this house.

And the pull from the hallway breaks. She can’t watch, or stay, or wait anymore after a lifetime of waiting. It was a fantasy, the thing a desperate person makes for themselves when they have nothing else to build with. A dollhouse and an empty room and a car that would never start no matter how much you tried to fix it to drive them all away from the past. This summer was just crashing a car going full speed in the opposite direction of the past.

She knew she had to act quickly. She knew it was only going to be more painful if she stayed to see Han turn his disappointment towards her. She rushed to the open window and kicked out the screen. Shame flared through her to puncture the wholeness of this house with an imperfection. It rattled down the slope of the roof, got caught in a gutter. The neighbors would talk. But she was sliding down slick leaves and the smell of rain until she jumped down to the ground to make her escape.

She left behind the only things that matter; Han, Ben, Chewie, her family, and the toolbox.

For the first time since she came to the house the air was cold outside. Summer was over. She shivered as she ran down the street with just her shoes and her purse.

Rey had always known deep down what Han was going to choose.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ah...so...I promise this has a happy ending?
> 
> I'm sorry for being M.I.A, my hard drive failed in the middle of August so I couldn't update or even write that much until I got it repaired. I'll be back to regularly scheduled updates...in October because I'm going to London for a week. Sorry!


	6. now I'll fake it every single day 'til I don’t need fantasy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I go on a somewhat unfair rant about apple-picking in this chapter; I pass no judgement on those who enjoy the activity and have gone on several pleasant excursions myself.

Rey had little experience making the jump from bedroom window to ground, because she’d never known what it was like to have a bedroom or a roof to leap from. Adrenaline numbed the  _ crunch _ she heard when her left knee took most of her weight.

That pain was only held back for so long. 

Rey was an active person. Her means of being useful, of survival, were not just on her feet; but clamoring up ladders or diving under the hood of a car. Fixing.

That jump had destroyed her ability to do that. 

It was probably for the best. Han knew every mechanic in the state. It’d be easy to find her in another garage, and that just felt like cheating again. Worming her way into someone else’s home through the same methods. By her own honor, she wanted the Solos to be special. That she was there, once, for a reason, not a carefully crafted con. 

Still, through necessity’s sake, she slept off the pain in Rose’s spare bedroom. There wasn’t really anywhere else to go and the need to go from a house to  _ another house _ instead of crashing on a park bench was a strange and terrifying impulse. Rose was down, game, and almost unfairly chipper about the whole ordeal. 

“It’s kind of like a sleepover!” Rose had said, a brave smile on her face, even though she was shooting furtive glances at Finn during the hand-off of clean linens and towels at the sight of Rey’s purple knee.

“I promise I’ll be out of your hair in no time.”

Rose’s voice softened; “Rey, I want you to listen to me when I say that you should take all the time you need. No rush.”

Rey woke up to hear her arguing with Finn in the living room the first morning, after a muddy and limping Rey crashed their post-date-night-in with a fit of tears and minimal explanations. 

“You cannot on good conscience harbor her here if her leg is that bad-”

Rey merely closed her eyes and rolled over, letting a slushy and melted ice pack flop onto the floor, blocking it all out and going back to sleep. 

* * *

 

Some mysteries are mysteries merely by lack of notice. This one was the easiest to solve; she borrowed Rose’s laptop and found Ben’s uncle. Different last names, for sure, and it took more digging that a simple Google search, but Leia as a political figure had a healthy online presence and some smear campaign from the eighties revealed she was the daughter of Anakin Skywalker, who was controversial in ways Rey was not aware of. There was also a private investigator named Luke Skywalker an hour away. 

She divvied up what cash she did have for bus fair and was there by the afternoon. 

She felt guilt, propping her bad leg up on an empty bus seat, because she had sort of vaguely implied she would go to a hospital today during a tense breakfast with her friends. They were feeling guilty, she had convinced them it had nothing do with the double-date they went on the night before, because Finn had been half-convinced Poe had dropped her off by _throwing her out of a moving car._ Poe was already a distant memory, even upon dropping her off his schedule made it clear it would be  _ ‘I’ll see you when I see you’ _ even if they did like each other. But it was too complicated to say that emotional stuff had forced her out of a functional home; it would look too much like Han or Kyo were  _ actually  _ abusing her if she pointed blame at them, and trying to explain how she even ended up there in the first place was too complicated to even crack into. 

Especially when the assumptions were backwards, but fairly true. She was sleeping with Ben, but she belonged there far before that. 

The office was at the top of several flights of stairs, and obviously no elevator, which Rey took as her penance for that day. She grit her teeth and angled her hips, the good leg hopping with her hands’ assistance from the railing, the bad one dangling down. It took a long time, and she was drenched in sweat when she reached the top. About halfway, she realized she didn’t know what she’d do if he wasn’t in. But that wasn’t enough to make her ever go back. 

There was no answer to her knock. 

She slid down to the floor and let her breath release all the anger she now felt; the jolting bus ride and the limping around a city she’d never been to and climbing several flights of stairs with a bad knee in an office building that mostly looked like a front for drugs at this point. She nearly screamed down the stairs for the echo to fill the whole building with her defeat. 

She always had to try again. She was just out of options on what to try, now that she wasn’t ready to go back. So she was going to wait here. For as long as it took. She would sleep on these steps if she had to. 

But once her breathing had calmed, however long that took, she heard it. Rustling. There was someone in there.

He didn’t answer the knock because he didn’t want her to know he was there. 

The knob still didn’t turn. With a frustrated grunt, she threw herself at the door. Basically plywood, it collapsed inward into a tiny, cluttered office. A weary-looking man in gray sat at the desk. Over his shoulder, there was a security monitor. He’d seen her go up all those stairs.  _ He’d watched her this whole time.  _

“And just when I thought you’d given up,” he didn’t look up from his computer. Rey was so, so close to picking up the phonebook near the door and hurling it at him. 

“You really should get a better lock,” she snapped at him. 

“What do you want?”

She at least appreciated the lack of pleasantries. 

“Ben says you have a file on me.”

Luke carefully circled a spot on the map unfolded next to his keyboard. Drew a line between that and an existing spot. Looked back to the screen. Coordinates. He was clearly going to keep working as she waited for answers. “Don’t believe everything he says. Ben doesn’t like me very much, because I’ve done some “search and rescue” for him on his mother’s behalf. Ask him about the time I had to track him down in Mexico, he won't tell you, because it's embarrassing-”

“I want my file.”

He appeared to be stalling from answering, leaning back in his seat and doing some  _ very important extra lines _ between two more points on the map.

“That’s information that has to be paid for.”

Rey had a relatively long summer of being calm and collected. Finally, she raised her voice at someone in this fucked-up family;

_ “I want to see what you told them about me.” _

Luke finally glanced up at her. “Why would you need to see that? You lived it.”

“Because I…”

She looked down at him, semi-ready to throw the phone book again. His eyebrows raised. He was just going to be so  _ dry _ about this whole thing, wasn’t he?

“Look, there’s nothing damning in it, because you got to stay on with Han after that. They’d have kicked you out, or moved you to a shelter, if it was going to be something that would be a negative influence on Ben. No arrests, no criminal record, we didn’t find that you did any hard drugs habitually. You’re just from nowhere, which is impressive, because kids like you tend to survive on petty theft and cycles of getting caught and pushed through the system. It seems that you’ve slipped through every crack in the universe.”

Rey knew this. She never felt bad for herself about this. But this stranger knew, Han knew, Kylo knew-

“I want my fucking file. I’m sure Leia has her copy. It’s already paid for.”

There was a sigh. A drawer opened. He slapped down the file onto the desk.

_ That was easy.  _ Tentatively, she sat down in the chair in front of her.

“How did you find me?”

She sneered at him.  _ “Google.” _

Her hands shook as she opened the pages. Maybe she hadn’t thought this through. There was a rush to her head that was making her dizzy. Was she ready, for maybe new information about her parents-

“I didn’t find them,” Luke shook his head, for once softening to her. Speaking quietly. “That  _ could _ mean they’re alive-”

“They were always running from something,” Rey murmured as if excusing them, “I’m sure they’d find it flattering if you hadn’t caught them, it’s their intention.”

She was able to stop shaking at that point. At least the Solos didn’t know her parents were in an unmarked grave somewhere and were holding off breaking the news to her. She didn’t need anything held over her head. There was still a sacred place where she held Han that could not handle…

That level of betrayal.

“Whereas you, for all your lack of presence, it was like you wanted to be found.”

First was a copy of her birth certificate. 

_ “Oh.” _

“What?”

She was so surprised she told him;

“I didn’t know I was a US citizen.”

That was maybe the biggest stroke of luck she’d ever had. A huge motivation to be off the grid. Avoiding hospitals. Dubious of any institution that needed anything more than a face-to-face meeting. 

“Because of the accent?”

She nodded. “Theirs. I had no idea where I was born.”

She let out a sigh of relief. A copy was enough, she hadn’t had anything to go on for ID before. And there wasn’t the mire of other complications if she tried to eventually  _ pursue _ an ID.

Luke was watching her carefully, with the pity she never wanted to see from the Solo household. “You really don’t remember much, do you?”

Her hands fell on some black-and-white stills from security cameras; a department store, a mall entryway, a little girl in a winter jacket and a pretzel-

She withheld the urge to scream.

“I blocked it out,” she snapped defensively, bosoming the file closer so he wouldn’t see what she was looking at. 

A few childhood photos from when she was very little, and those she dismissed. Rey on the edges of barbecues with parents’ friends she didn’t care to remember. Blurrily standing near a grill, a soon to be cooked beer-can-chicken stuffed like a fresh kill in her little hands. Posing on hunting trips with men who’s  _ smell _ she could remember, voices, the light wash of their jeans, but not names or faces. There was a blur of unfamiliar, a picture where she didn’t know what she was looking at. With shaking hands, she realized she’d stumbled on her mother’s high school photos. She didn’t recognize that woman. It was like she’d blocked it all out.

She flung them back down into the spine of the file and kept flipping. 

Luke was right, there wasn’t much. A few statements of people in homeless shelters or prisons who were able to recognize her. He’d gotten a decent number of interviews. Saying she helped them, when she could. She never saw it as help when she was just as powerless. 

She held up his file. 

“I’m keeping this.”

He shrugged. “Can’t fight a crippled girl, so go ahead. Good luck on those stairs.”

Rey winced as she pushed herself up from the chair. Stuffing the file in her bag, she hopped over to the door. She leaned against the frame, examining Luke carefully. 

“Are you going to tell the Solos all about my visit?”

“Haven’t decided. Though I don’t know if on good conscience I can let you walk around on that knee for much longer.”

Second time she’d heard that about herself. Made those stairs look like a piece of cake. Preventing herself from being found, with her few resources, was going to be difficult. Or as easy as falling back off the grid. None of it mattered. Because everything had.

She had lost them.

She heard the pause of a phone being dialed before she even made it down one level. 

“You’re not going to believe this. She found _me_ before I found _her.”_

They were looking. 

She shrugged off the guilt in the pit of her stomach.

* * *

 

“Did you really think I wasn’t going to find you?”

Rey’s keys stuck in the lock of the door. She was still at Rose’s, but now actually paying rent for the past few weeks. 

She was able to charm her way into an off-the-books job as a  _ seasonal worker _ for a nearby farm, mostly off her bad knee by driving crates of produce from the fields to the market itself, or manning the stand from a stool behind the counter. She had never pictured her life as selling pumpkins and helping fry up apple cider donuts, but it was so twee and charmed she liked the little fantasy of it all, the leaves changing, the purchase of her own cute sweater to wear. The pay was shit, all of her coworkers were teenagers, but there was enough for food and rent and she didn’t feel  _ as _ pathetic for staying with Rose, even though it was still a huge favor.

Finn had done her, and his girlfriend, a solid by finding the  _ actual _ price of her monthly rent and dividing it in equal half-shares so Rose couldn’t charitably low-ball Rey’s contribution, which she had attempted at first to do. Finn always managed to be a good boyfriend and a good friend at the same time. Rey wasn’t sure how much sex they had been having around Rose’s apartment, but it must have been drastically cut down since she arrived. Rose seemed to have migrated to his dorm. He was still a good sport about it.

_ That must be what real love is.  _

The images were catalogue-worthy; drinking tea with Rose, squishing through wet leaves with baskets of carrots slung over her elbow, laughing into a crisp wind. Emotionally, they were hollow, when anyone else but the few people who knew how bad things were would look at her and see a normal person, not quite on her feet but working hard and filling her days and supporting herself. 

She used to be a private person, that summer, with a fully stocked home. Now she was a public person with a home that was really nothing. Rose didn’t let her starve on her slim wages, it was never that dire, Rey wasn’t even late on payments. But it was an empty room, devoid of even another person’s personality. Even the ghost of one. 

Nobody would know that from her smiling at the counter, wiping cinnamon sugar off her fingers and picking straw out of her hair. 

She could have been a suburbanite whose parents were going through a bad divorce or something, there was damage; but no one saw how deep it went. It was an empty life, but a life, and she hadn’t had to wave her pathetic birth-certificate photocopy under any prying eyes. The knee was bad, she limped, but she just gave minimal verbalized information about it and just let people hold doors and offer to carry things. There was a place for a polite, pretty girl in a town like this, a place she didn’t like but certainly appreciated the ease of. Reinvention was a seductive kind of act, frightfully naughty at times, that Rey never felt like she had to be herself at all anymore. Maybe she could just be whatever was convenient.

Still, Rose’s place maybe wasn’t detached enough from the Solo household, since Kylo was now crowding her to the apartment door, trapped. That person would have to come out, whether she wanted her to or not.

“I…”

She released the keys, leaving the chain dangling from the lock. 

“I don’t know.”

She heard a genuine  _ growl _ behind her, saw his hand press on the door by her head. It was shaking. It was easier to move on by pretending she would never have to face the pain she caused. A nobody, who walked away, from the people who to her had everything. Despite their efforts to prove her wrong. Even when they had, when she ignored their cries anyway. 

“What were you thinking?”

She listened to him breathe for a moment too long. But it was the little doses that pulled her back. If she looked, she’d be overwhelmed. But she’d slept to the sound of that breathing. It was lulling her even now. 

“I had to get out of there.”

“So you left me to clean up your mess? I was ready to face it with you, Rey, and I turn around and you’re gone? We could have both left, if it was that bad, and found somewhere else for us. If you’d waited a minute. Why didn’t you trust me?”

She didn’t turn all the way, instead opting to rest her brow to the middle of his forearm. He was trembling again, at her touch. 

“I didn’t want to take you away from your father. I couldn’t do that to him.”

“So now  _ nobody _ gets to be happy?”

Her shoulders rolled back, bumping his chest to push him away from the door. She didn’t want him forcing his way inside. Though she didn’t really believe he’d do that. She just didn’t want to look at the hurt she could hear in his voice and see it in his eyes. 

“Kylo,” she was trembling herself when she twisted the key in the lock, “I don’t know how we thought this was going to end. If it would end at all; but it had to.”

“Why? You decided that. Maybe it would have ended with all of us feeling so lucky we found you, because you belonged with us. With me.”

“You need to get yourselves sorted. You and your father. I could not keep placating you two and  _ your shit _ for the rest of my life. Just because it’s the only thing I’m good at.”

She pushed the door open. He did not let her take a step further than the first one he saw her limp. 

“What did you do?” he breathed. She had held off on focusing on the pain for weeks, but the fear in his voice was going to crack her in half. She didn’t know if she could walk after hearing him speak to her like that. 

_ “I’m fine.” _

“The fuck you’re fine,” with a yelp, she was in his arms, bridal-style. She was so close to his face. Livid, sleepless, and worried were emotions that came to mind. Hair a mess. Scratchy stubble. Wired look in his eyes. But he was so alert, so on her face and her body and lifting her skirt to see that knee-

Sober, compulsive fixer, the man who made sure she ate vegetables and had a good first date and didn’t drown in his pool.

The son of the man who’d given her a warm bed and cooked her the first steak she’d had in a lifetime and gave her a seat in the only place sacred to him, his car. 

Kylo let out a pained breath, a dying animal noise in his throat. 

“You  _ hurt yourself _ to get away from me,” he pressed his brow to her temple, holding her in the hallway of the apartment building in a way that made her tremble in some kind of agony. He didn’t deserve to think that. 

This was so bizarre. He wasn’t leaning on anything, he wasn’t struggling against her weight strewn across his elbows. He just held her to his chest and pressed his brow to her until she turned and pressed her brow to his. 

Finally, Rey took a deep breath. “I’m sorry, Kylo,” And she realized how much this was true by how readily it came to her lips, though it had never been put to words before: “I loved you too much. If I didn’t leave that house, I never would have. There’s just too much going on...and you both need to heal and understand each other.”

He backed up, almost like he’d taken a bullet or a punch, and settled against the opposite wall of the hallway. His back supported his weight as he slid both of them down to the floor. He held her very carefully so not to disturb her knee. 

Kylo’s brow pushed up against hers. It felt so good, so right, to be close to him again. He was so, so needy, and the jagged worry that had filled her idle thoughts finally had a name. And a face. 

She had been ignoring herself to ignore him, because it was too fucking painful. 

He just cradled her to his chest for a long time, breathing patiently. She could tell he was using some methods from his time at rehab to calm down and process his emotions. When they were genuine, they came to him slowly. 

“I love you,” he said quietly.

As if she didn't know when he proved it by shooting himself in the fucking foot for her.

She blinked back tears, staring at the texture of the rough stucco wall over his shoulder. She had said it in past tense. She wondered if that hurt him.

“You might be scared it was just sex...it wasn’t. I felt so fucking good fighting with you, and watching tv with you, and watching you fit into my life. I felt good about myself for the first time in years.”

Her heart was in her fucking throat. “It isn’t healthy for you to need me until you trust yourself. What if something takes me away, even beyond  _ my _ control, and you haven’t done the work to stay sober?”

“Yeah, you certainly threw that lesson at me.”

But he gave her a weak smile. 

“I’m sorry.”

“You broke Chewie’s heart, and that dog isn’t going to live forever, so you really should-”

_ “Stop.”  _

She hid her face in his neck. Leaving, in the context of this family, did not feel like a mistake. So why did it hurt so badly?

“Why are you here, Rey? We want to help you. Han didn’t want to push you with all this paperwork stuff before you were ready, but if you want to live a normal life, you could have just told us. We would’ve helped you.”

“Because I need to do it on my own,” she swallowed thickly, her tongue at her lips to keep it off the tense chords of his throat. 

He let out a sad sigh. His thumb traced circles on her hip. 

“Did you ever think that breaking my heart was going to do more damage than staying?”

She closed her eyes. “For the greater good, yes. But I didn’t think I was breaking your heart.”

Kylo just held her. Dependable. She was sad that she’d never considered him that until he was there; but he was the guy driving her to CVS for a morning after pill and making Han take her to a doctor. Even on bad days, he was considerate of her, ushering her away from his symptoms so he wouldn’t hurt her. Buying her candy when he did.

“I knew you were strong enough. If you weren’t, I would have done it for you.”

Finally, he took a deep breath and nodded. “I was.”

“I’m so fucking proud of you, Kylo.”

The words made his eyes flutter shut. She heard a noise in the pit of his chest that made her mouth water. She tell him anything he needed to hear for that noise. 

He opened his eyes to her after a moment, his expression soft.

“But you weren’t in the way. You were never a fucking inconvenience. I love you more than I love myself, and I can’t stand to sit back and watch you throw your life away like this.”

Now it had to be said. It had to be said, but it still hurt her as much as it hurt him. She touched his face gently. He still seemed so open, still able to be hurt by her. Knowing she was going to bring him to his knees, he kept letting her tell him devastatingly true things.

She ran her thumb down his scar;

“Then maybe you’re starting to understand how your parents felt.”

* * *

At some point, they couldn’t just sit in the hallway anymore. It had felt good to pretend she could die right here, holding each other and not having to  _ miss _ anymore, but she had to figure out what she was going to eat for the ten dollars she had left before next payday and she had to ice her knee and she had to lie down because she was tired all the time. But he slid her off his lap only to stand and pick her up again.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m not letting you walk around like this.”

“Kylo-”

“No,” he squeezed her firmly as he rounded the corner to the stairwell. She didn’t help him open the door, but he managed it somehow without dropping her. 

“I’m not going back to that house-”

“I’m not taking you home,” his tone was incredulous. “And don’t you start on that  _ owing  _ shit. You’re my family. If I got stuck with the one I got, I get to choose you to be a part of it. Family doesn’t let that fucking happen to each other. I may never get to touch you again but we are taking you to a doctor and we are dealing with this. I don’t care what it costs.”

She let out a shaky sigh. 

There was no answer for that. 

“I know you can do it alone,” he said gently, rocking her from side to side with whatever foot was on the further step. “I don’t want you to have to, okay? I know what you can do, and it amazes me. Let me do something with my love, or I’ll go crazy, okay?”

Flawed and broken as they were, she would never deserve the Solo men.

* * *

Her knee had been dislocated by the fall for weeks and only sheer force of will had kept her mobile. Every day she tied it off with gauze to keep everything in one place and just moved steadily onwards. She remembered the comments Han made when she was practicing walking in high heels before she met Leia, something about  _ Bambi, _ and she had to suppress the sadness that same up with every step. Never got to that movie.

It had not taken long to fix, but it was a medical bill Kylo did not even let her see before he whisked it away and handled it. Same doctor, ironically, same waiting room Han had read those magazines and tried so hard to help her. In some ways, she was the easy kid. She had lots of missing parts that were easy to replace. That’s probably why he preferred helping her instead of Kylo. It was like repairing the used Falcon instead of having the fixed the ruined husk of his own car. Fixing that car would mean he’d have to face how it broke to begin with. 

And now  _ Kylo _ was driving again, like the Falcon never would. The ride to the doctor’s was seemingly tense with that knowledge, like they were too scared to acknowledge this. If Kylo had his car back, was he even bothering to live at home? He was free again. She hadn’t bothered to wonder where he was until she realized he was going to  _ drive her _ to the doctor. Then she had to manage a discreet appointment answering minimal questions about the trauma to her knee she’d been aggravating for weeks.

The first thing Kylo did after her knee was popped back into place was kiss her thigh, above the brace, as carefully as possible. Her skin was still flushed from the pain. Then he helped her to the car, bought her dinner from a drive thru, and insisted he  _ needed _ to pick some things up from the store. She waited in the car and felt like a dumbass when he walked out loaded up with groceries for her. Compulsive fixer. She wanted to kill and kiss him. 

He spoke as he dropped the bags off in the backseat;

“Most of my suspension was spent in rehab. This was the first thing I did with the license I got back.”

Of course it was.

“How have you been?”

When he sat down in the driver’s seat things had been pregnantly silent again, like they weren’t sure how to resume. That love was easier to talk about in past tense. He didn’t start the car.

“It’s been fucking awful,” he admitted, staring out ahead of him and the road covered in autumn leaves. His eyes were bugging, she realized he was maybe trying not to cry. 

“I’m so sorry.”

“It was hard before, but I had you. This new thing to focus in. This mysterious girl in my pool who entranced my absent father into actually wanting to parent. He and I...weren’t good after you left. He didn’t exactly blame me, but it was like ‘well you really stepped in it’ kind of tone with me, like if I had kept my dick in my pants you would still be here. Which is true.”

“I wanted it too.”

He almost shrugged it off, but she covered his hand with hers.

“Kylo, I wanted it too. He should be just as mad at me.”

“But you’re gone, and I’m the one dealing with him in pain,” he cast her a sheepish look. “So I get it, how his melancholy can be so all-encompassing. I didn’t give you enough credit for not being scared off by him in the beginning.”

She understood it, someone who finally put it to words; Han’s pain was sharp because he kept it distant from himself. It cut into her just as acutely, but she felt guilty for pointing it out because he was the one truly suffering. But it had hurt her too, waiting for Ben to come home.

“It felt like my own,” she admitted, and he turned and she saw it in him too. How they recognized each other. 

Kylo nodded stiffly.

They each took a turn being the prodigal child. Even Han, as Kylo had implied, was the first one who vanished. Leia too. 

Rey had just not anticipated anyone ever waiting for her after she’d left.

She leaned back in her seat, closing her eyes;

“He’s not...I’m not you. He can’t be  _ that _ upset that I’m gone.”

“We  _ both _ are.”

There was fire in his tone, she cracked an eye open to look at him. 

“I need to do things on my own for a while.”

He started up the car with a tense jaw. “You’re still taking the groceries.”

* * *

Did people really eat  _ every _ apple they picked while apple-picking? It’s an expensive hobby, so Rey had questions.

Rey felt her thumbs cave into soft spots, saw bugs skitter out of fully-loaded bags, saw the pathetic crop of Gala that the farmer she worked for chagrined at the size of because of not enough rain this summer. And she hated the whole affair of ringing up those weighted bags. The stupid smiles:  _ I picked it myself  _ while she saw the people who picked the bags loaded up in crates all around the shop and got shit pay for it, in cash at the end of the week, like she did. Little kids would rip the fruit down and then fling the thing onto the ground to leave it to rot. Adults would do it too. Before the first frost, there’s usually a lot of bees in the orchard, and a lot of screaming from people who realize that this shit can only be made palatable for those who will  _ never have to do this _ for so long. Who could imagine that dealing with fruit meant dealing with bees? 

But the luxury of paying to pick your  _ own _ apples, half of which were going in the trash, it was so  _ cute, _ wasn’t it? 

Did anyone in this room know the girl ringing them up had made a meal on half-eaten apples from the trash on multiple occasions in her life? 

Even she felt spoiled, complicit in this arrangement, when she was allowed to take extra bags of them home or other bumper crop samples. A million carrots with Kylo to cook them. Was there a place this could go instead of home with whoever would take it, or the trash? 

In her mind, she was telling this to Kylo. And it wasn’t until once, when her mind flung his dry laugh back at her, that she realized that she told every one of her true thoughts to him, in her head. This led to unintentional trembles, hands sparking away if she accidentally touched someone’s skin when handing off change, and staring out the window at the changing leaves. 

_ “Talk to Leia about it,”  _ he offered, from somewhere over her shoulder yet not in the room at all. It was a good idea. And she couldn’t even call it her own, with him filling her head with himself at all hours of the day. 

She hinged and unhinged her knee. She’d always have a bit of a limp because she held off on treatment for so long, but it didn’t hurt her anymore. And she thought of Kylo, swallowing his hurt and his pride and taking care of her anyway. 

He had given her a phone number to use if she needed it. She had assumed for emergencies, so she wouldn’t starve to death or something. Though it was pretty obvious to both of them she was smart enough to keep it from being that dire. She could hardly get an office job, but she was doing sparsely okay enough on her own. That was a lot better than where she was for most of her life. 

But she did need him. 

They were going to try and make this normal.

* * *

“Hey.”

She heard him sitting up.

_“Hey,”_ the tension in his throat from his abdomen flexing, probably laying out in his bed or on the couch when she called, straightening because he thought this was serious. “How’s your knee? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine.” she stared at the plexiglass in front of her. The last time she was in one of these booths she’d been sleeping in it. “I’m calling from a payphone. I don’t have a phone and I don’t want you blowing up Rose’s.”

“Okay.”

“You obviously already know where she lives. You free tonight?”

He let out a soothed, eager sigh. Like a kid hearing he could open his birthday presents  _ soon.  _ Ambiguous relief for a long time of longing. 

“Yes.”

For the first time, she really felt like she had a choice. For the first time, she was inviting him into  _ her _ space. Her little room that she paid for. 

“Rose and Finn are going to be out late. Come over.”

The first time he came over, he gave her a backrub. Her shoulders were in a lot of pain from lifting several pound bags of produce every day. There really wasn’t...any kind of other touching. He played with her hair, kneaded the knots in her back, let her touch his face and his neck with shaking hands. But everything they’d done was on a timer before, trying to reach the end quickly so they wouldn’t be at risk of being caught anymore. She almost didn’t know what to do without handicaps. 

“Someday, I’ll have my own place, and we can do whatever we want.”

She moaned appreciatively. 

“Someday, you’re going to build me a house and paint the kitchen cobalt blue.”

“Mesa red bedroom.”

“That’s never going to happen.”

“Hmm,” he buried his face in her neck, but didn’t suck or kiss on her skin like he used to. “Want you in my home. Doesn’t feel like home unless you’re in it.”

But she touched his face, lying next to her on her bed. He had ownership when it was his bed, she had something to prove there. Here, he was surprisingly tender and gentle. He was hers to take. 

“I want you to do something for me.” He wasn’t going to make her. His eyes were a little bit scared, “I want to try something.”

“Okay.”

“Call me Ben.”

She kissed him for the first time since she left. 

“Okay, Ben.”

* * *

Taking their time was a sort of luxury. Ben came over after she was done with work. He had offhandedly explained that he had  _ a lot of money _ he had earned in his previous life, a sizeable amount to live off of, and he wasn’t in a rush to return to his swanky office job and needed to re-explore some options before he figured out what was next. This was more than a plan he’d ever ever given her at the Solo house, so she tried her best to understand that. It still felt weird to her, but she held those feelings at bay. She didn’t have to be doing this, struggling, Ben offered to support her. But idleness had made her feel spoiled and useless before, in the taste of it she had gotten. Maybe that’s another reason for Han’s impossible car projects. He could just  _ buy _ a new car.

He would bring over dinner, insisting she try and save her money and that  _ this was a date. _ They didn’t go out that often, somewhat shy of their own relationship. They’d eat and watch movies, usually with Finn and Rose, who were confused but supportive. Rey and Han were never big on explanations so maybe everyone just assumed she was his daughter or niece, but they were able to shift from that frame of mind with relative ease. And Ben brought enough food for them, so they didn’t complain.

She and Ben would fool around in her bed when the movie was over, or without the foreplay of whatever movie he thought she’d like and just sneaking into her room right when he arrived. And it was more casual, less like marking or claiming or being territorial of their secret affair. It was just...her boyfriend inching her shirt up her belly to kiss the muscles of her abdomen. Pressing her bare chest to his. Stroking his soft hair. 

It wasn’t a lot of stuff; it was time. Time she valued more than anything. 

There was always this idea that if he caught up with her, after her escape, he’d fuck her into the ground. Some kind of violent capture to prove she couldn’t defy him. But when she’d wanted freedom, he’d given it to her, and any invitation to her body needed to be voiced or he kept his distance. 

“I think you were right,” he said once, resting his brow to her belly. “I don’t think I need you as much. It makes me  _ want _ you more, though. When I can’t just take you to my room and have you whenever I can get it.”

She hummed in agreement. There was less of an edge to him, less temper. His seductive purrs weren’t as mocking, something kinder in the eyes at the sight of her pleasure. 

Making him work his way up was going to lead to an eventual burst when they realized how fucking  _ good _ they felt together. 

“I think if they ever heard us, you’ll scare my roommates.”

Finn basically counted as a third roommate, but she didn’t need to charge him rent. That was Rose’s prerogative how he earned his keep.

“I want you to come back.”

“I know.”

“You were able to love me there.”

“I love you now.”

“Do you?”

She combed his hair out of his face. Thumbed at his scar. 

“I love you, Ben.”

* * *

There were still bad nights. Nights where she was tired and missed how lazy and peaceful this summer had been. Nights where he had argued with Han and didn’t know what was next for him. Ben was in family therapy for the first time since he was a teenager, both Han and Leia there with him, and though Rey got the distinct sense it was helping, he wasn’t  _ happy _ about it.

On bad nights, they usually lay in her bed in silence, not even touching, just thinking in the same place. 

But sometimes they tried to pretend everything was fine and that didn’t go so well.

“The recycled produce thing is a fucking good idea. I don’t know why you don’t just swallow your pride and call Leia.”

“Because I have caused nothing but chaos in this woman’s life since the beginning of summer and she’s in the middle of an election! And besides, she doesn’t owe me shit.”

“She doesn’t have to owe you for it to be a good idea. You’ve probably met half the farmers in this state at these markets, there can be like a tax incentive and she’d look good with the “disgruntled agriculturists” she’s been struggling to get votes from.”

“Then I’m a fucking pawn. It’s always so useful for everyone else when I’m a fucking pawn.”

He was nice enough to come over to make soup out of some of the surplus squashes, and she was yelling at him. It was hard to do when her mouth was watering at the smell of thai curry sauce and coconut milk. She managed, though, because he made it possible being so stubborn.

He was focused on chopping the butternut squash, getting a little shaky with his knife work in his passion and making her a little nervous. 

“Why do I have to call her over  _ your _ idea?”

“Because I thought you wanted to help me.”

She really pissed him off with that. He was completely unmoving from his spot by the cutting board. His expression dangerous. 

_ “I do.” _

“Then just call your fucking mother.”

“Why don’t you see your idea through to the end instead of trying to inspire other people to do the good in the world for you, Rey? You can’t just have ideas for people to benefit from your thoughts. Otherwise we’re just jumping to meet your impossible standards.”

“Calling your mother,  _ who loves you, _ who didn’t  _ abandon you, _ is not  _ impossible.” _

They left her in a shopping mall. 

They sent her with five dollars to buy a pretzel and left while she was paying. She was so panicked she lost the spare change. 

She waited in the security office as they searched the place up and down, but no one called in for a lost kid. If they were looking for her, they’d have gone there as the first place to look, told a cashier in the first store that they’d realized something was wrong, called  _ someone. _

One nervous-looking secretary kept promising that her mother would realize she was missing any minute now and return for her. 

By closing, the adults were getting antsy. When they tossed around the idea to contact the police, nervous they hadn’t yet already because this happened all the time. Rey had pride. Even as a little kid. This was not something for the cops to get involved in.

Rey snuck out of the office and had been on her own ever since. 

Now she saw a glimmer of the jagged man in the garage, smirking down at her, calling her Han’s rescue. And the same glimmer of the scared-to-be-hurt young man on the bike, self conscious of any sign of love. 

He went by Ben now. Again.

“You left  _ me, _ remember?”

That she could not believe. She was not her fucking mother.

“ _ Where are you going?” _

“I’m taking a fucking shower,” she stormed out of the kitchen, leaving him with a half-assembled recipe. She was barely helping anyway, everything she could do would not be done to his standards so she tried to prop him up with idle chatter, which just annoyed him when he was working anyway.

She was wound up really tight from work; it was easy but draining. Mindless but full-bodied, her knees and ankles and shoulders tense at the end of the day. Hot water soothed that pain away, but her head was thudding over the argument. Ben was encouraging her, but could he bail her out for one measly phone call so she didn’t feel  _ so awful _ for asking a favor? He of all people would understand why she’d be nervous to speak with his mother, this idea meant enough to her that she’d even dare ask him for help.

The smell caught her off guard when she exited the bathroom in a towel. That soup smelled like heaven, left heating on the stove for whenever she was ready. Rose and Finn were at the movies, but they often just said that to pretend they weren’t hanging out in Finn’s cramped dorm room just so they all could have some fucking privacy, because they were really good friends. Rey and Ben had squandered that sacred privacy to fight.

Ben was seated on the couch, his hands in his lap and tensed white. She wanted to offer him a beer maybe even more than he clearly wanted to drink one.

"Taking care of us isn't the only thing you're good at," he said first, and she had forgotten even saying that to him to the point she was startled he read her mind. He had clearly been thinking about it for a while, when she remembered that she did say it to him in the hallway after he found her.

“I want to tell you something.”

He nodded, staring at the coffee table. She wasn’t dumping him, but he certainly was acting like she was going to. 

“I haven’t had a drink since I left the house.”

He swallowed. “I never asked-”

“I know. I do it because you matter to me. Not because it’s required of me.”

He finally looked at her, her hair dripping on the floor. “You keep saying you want to do this on your own. I thought I was letting you do that. Leia  _ wants _ to work with you.”

She could blame her trembling on the cool air and being so wet in just a towel. “It’s scary.”

“Wanting something this much?”

“Yes.”

“Something, or everything?”

“You. And everything. And more for myself.”

He leaned forward and bought her hand into his. “I’m not going to leave you.”

“I’m not going to leave you either.”

“I love you, okay? If you want me to call her, fine. I will. It’s just that I only call her to ask for shit.”

“Tell her it’s for your girlfriend.”

He laughed softly. “She’ll like that.”

“I love you, Ben.”

He just squeezed her hand. She took a deep breath and let the towel fall. She stood there while he looked. It wasn’t about being passably sexy for the pissy hot guy on the other end of the hall. 

It was about letting him look at her and see her as beautiful, as he did right now. 

Rose usually just gave up and crashed with Finn when she had a morning class, which she did the next morning. They had time. No chaperone. 

“How’ve you been sleeping, my good girl?” His eyes flickered up to her face as the words made her eyes roll back. “Do you still need it to sleep? What do you think about?”

“I think about you. And I feel lonely.”

He crooned in the back of his throat. “We can’t have that, can we?”

He took her other hand too, circling her wrists with his long fingers.

“Help,” she murmured, tilting her head to one side. He nodded. 

“Do you still touch yourself in bed all alone? What do you think about?”

“You.”

“I think about you too. Your smell. I still smell you on one of my shirts and I keep under my pillow.”

This made her moan aloud, resisting his pulls on her wrists to  _ get under him. _

“I liked when you took it from me,” she smoothed a hand up his arm, cupped to his collarbone, “got me out of my head. Made it so good.”

She watched him try to speak with his dry tongue. 

“And now?”

“I want to take. Get you out of your head. Make it so good.”

She straddled his lap, wet hair sluicing transparent spots on his t-shirt. 

He stared up at her, asking for confession as she touched her lips to his. 

“I asked my dad to call me Ben.”

So he had been testing that with her. He hadn’t asked her to stop yet, so she assumed he was getting used to it.

She touched the lines of his profile, his cheeks and nose and brow. “How did that go?”

“He had to be sarcastic,” but Ben held back a more pained reaction. “But I think it meant something to him. Something I didn’t know he could feel about me anymore.”

“Who couldn’t love you, Ben Solo?”

“Plenty of-”

_ “You couldn’t love yourself,”  _ she held him steady, rocking her hips against him. “But something in you knew, when you gave this little homeless mess exactly what she needed. You knew there was good. I bet you liked yourself when you made me cum.”

He nodded, shakily, clutching her hips like rosary beads. 

“Liked yourself whenever you made me happy.”

Getting him to talk now was too easy.

“First time in my life someone else’s happiness fucking mattered.”

_“Same,”_   Her chest was shuddering. “I was fine being sad with Han. We could have been sad in that empty house for forever. Until I met you. Then I needed you both to be happy. I needed the pain to get better so badly.”

“Your own pain, too.”

He rubbed himself against her. Needing to be at least a bit himself in this exchange. Her breath stuttered out of her nose over how wet she was against him, so slick and needy. 

“Okay. Mine too. I want us all to be happy.”

She let out a hiss, and he regarded her cautiously. 

"Your knee?"

"Kinda hurts." His lifted his to take some of the weight off her legs. That helped. 

Han's back, his hands, her knee. The fucking trio of them.

“You know what we need all to be happy, angel. We need you to _come home.”_

She had a hard time convincing herself that  _ home _ was couldn’t be any better than sliding her hips down to seat herself on his cock. Because that was pretty unbelievable. 

* * *

Ben had begged her,  _ begged her, _ to just come home. To just show up, he knew she could pull it off, just sit down at the kitchen table and smile her beautiful smile at Han and not talk about it. Act like it never happened. It was how that family had been for years, he tried to explain. No apologies. Forgiving anyway.

“I’m not like that,” she kissed his shoulder when he snuggled up against her, eyes shut as he moaned pathetically. They still didn’t have a lot of privacy in Rose’s spare room now that exams were picking up and Finn had the flu which Rose promptly caught for back-to-back weeks. Even after mind-blowing make-up sex, he was steadily becoming as touch-starved as when she met him. Something he whined about  _ constantly. _

_ “I want you home,” _ he insisted, his tone spoiled rotten, and she’d be damned if she didn’t love that spoiled little prince.

“I want to nap,” she complained, rolling her hips to brush her ass against his cock. Rose was sleeping on the couch. There was no way they could do this now.

He kept his face behind her ear, pleading as she felt his cock rise into the snug curve between her cheeks. _ “You can keep your job. You have that meeting with Leia next week. I’m not paying rent, so why should you be-” _

She looked at the automotive manuals she’d been hoarding from second-hand shops for the past few months. The one on top, mustard yellow and teal, was the Holy Grail. When she’d found the compressor instructions in that one, she knew. It was crystal clear. 

She hadn’t put it to words before, this thing unfurling in her mind, until she spoke as she combed her fingers into his hair:

“I have a plan.”

* * *

Rey punched the code into the garage at the crack of dawn, like how Han always started his Sunday mornings. Maybe even an hour  _ before _ the crack of dawn. Ben had texted her, very put out that this had to happen in the morning, but let her know the coast was clear and he had turned off Han’s alarm, buying her…a little while, at least. Just like she asked.

He was proving he could be relied on, slowly but surely. Taking on weight bit by bit, showing her he could handle it. Nobody ever knew what to expect from Ben: either too little or too much. She was the person to sit back and ask him to  _ show _ her. 

A few hours later, maybe thirty minutes after he usually came in, Han set his coffee down on the table, his face guarded and gruff, when he walked in and found Rey still bent under the hood of the Falcon. She was coated in motor oil, coveralls somewhat useless to the degree she was smeared in it. She rubbed her hands on the seat of her pants, but Han was staring at the metallic coat of it in her eyebrows. 

“How’s that compressor?” he said formally, but it was clearly to keep from saying  _ “Get the fuck out of my garage.” _

He was drinking less, Ben had told her, but that made him crabbier. 

Rey dangled the detached part in his face. The teal-and-yellow instruction manual was held open against her stomach by tucking it in her belt. She was beaming. 

“I  _ bypassed _ the compressor.”

There was a look on his face as he processed what this meant. 

And she tossed him the keys. He reached through the open window for the ignition. The Falcon sputtered to life. 

Han was breathing heavily as he placed his hands on the hood, this old thing alive again for the first time in decades, a glimpse at a moment in time that was long over. That was all they were both trying to rebuild. His family, her childhood. The things everyone else gave up on. 

But they could pretend. They could fill an empty house and fix a broken car and they could understand in silence what all the people who had moved on weren’t there to hear. 

Ben going forward with her wasn’t enough. She needed this too, from her dad.

He was happy. That was enough for her. 

Han placed a hand on her shoulder. She could hear him breathing funny, like he was trying not to cry. 

“You did good, kid.”

He kissed her forehead. 

Rey had never in her life had a father before. But it was worth it now. Now it really mattered. She felt safe when her arms slid around him.

"When I saw the footage Luke sent."  His voice was very quiet. "Of that kid. Wandering around that mall. It was like you knew what they did to you before anyone else did. You were the first one to believe the unthinkable. That anyone would just leave their own child. You broke my heart, Rey. You will always have a place here."

Rey let go. It was too much not to cry over anymore. He was right there. She was scared he'd be unable to handle the pain, if it wasn't shown to him in controlled glimpses. Han held on.

"You watched it?"

This was before Ben arrived. No wonder he let her stay at the greatest inconvenience. 

"I had to. Leia stuck with the still frames. Ben hasn't seen it yet."

Somehow, that made her feel better. "I don't know if he's ready to."

"Yeah," his chin pressed to the top of her head. Someday, maybe, he would be. For now, she had her dad. Father in law. Whatever. just because she was accepting it didn't make it not weird. "I can't give up on my son, Rey. Even if he hates my guts. I owe it to _you_ to do that."

It wasn't everything, but it was enough. 

“I’m really sorry, Han.”

He readily hugged back. 

“I would rather have him in your hands than anywhere else in the world. It’s  _ you  _ I worry about.”

Rey laughed. “Don’t. I love him so much. I’ll keep him in line.”

It was a pointless promise, Ben was keeping himself in line. She was just helping the only ways she could.

“Damn shame,” Han gave her a small smile as he pulled away. He took a shaky breath and looked down at the floor. “We missed you. At the house. There isn’t as much space as when you first came here, obviously, but I guess you don’t mind sharing a room with Ben.”

She crossed her arms over her chest, leaning her hip on the Falcon’s hood. It felt good to laugh about this, even if it was to avoid that it stung.

“Are you going to be okay with that?”

Han grimaced. “You don’t have to  _ try _ to give me a heart attack, you know.”

Rey was able to look at him, and smile, and finally feel relief that there weren’t anymore secrets. Their reconciliation was always going to be less complicated. Harder, but less complicated. She’d be arguing with Ben for the rest of her life. She’d be lucky if she did enough in that time to piss Han off that badly maybe twice. 

“We need to take a drive.”

“Get in.”

Rey couldn’t contain herself as she slid into the passenger seat.

“Should we get Ben?” Han glanced back at the house. 

She’d talked it over with him first. Ben wasn’t ready. She understood. They couldn’t all three be at the same place at the same time. 

“No,” she smiled at him. “This is just us.”

* * *

_ “Ben.” _

He sat up when she barged outside, dropping his book onto the pavement at the concern in her voice. He liked being outside in the fall, comfortable even though she was  _ dying _ over being barefoot. She’d left the house in that much of a rush.

“What’s wrong?”

“My…” her throat closed up.  _ Things were replaceable _ , as she tried to tell herself, but she would never get a toolset from Han that meant as much as the one he gave her when she had nothing. She could have sworn was there  _ this morning  _ in Ben’s room. And now it was gone. 

“I left a toolbox in your room. When I left. It was really important. And now it’s gone.”

The hurt was swelling in her chest. Maybe Han and Ben thought they could just get her another one, and it was better to get rid of it in case she never came back so they wouldn’t have to look at it. 

“Oh,” Ben scooped up his book, fixing the bent pages,  _ “that.” _

Rey was trying very hard not to cry as he seemed to ponder his response. 

_ “Dad?” _ He craned his head past her, towards the house. His tone was casual to the point she wanted to strangle him, she already had tears down to her chin. “Rey wants to know about her tool set.”

“Jesus, Ben, don’t torture her,” Han appeared from the door out of the kitchen, his hands propped on the frame. “Show her.”

Ben smirked, grabbed Rey’s hand with a gentle squeeze. “Come on.”

Rey blindly followed Ben, her free hand wiping tears from her eyes in her confusion. But it made sense, they must have moved it to the garage. It was just in the way when she was gone. 

Ben flipped the light switch to the garage, the industrial room flooded with not it’s usual utilitarian light but a warm glow. The windows were uncovered for once, the autumn afternoon light filling the space with gold and rust. 

She stumbled forward, looking for the bright orange box. But when she saw it tucked away somewhere on a lower shelf of a workbench, she lost her breath. 

Everything had been meticulously taken out out of it and cleaned, and hung on hooks over a worktable that hadn’t been in the shop the last time she was there. 

She had a file cabinet under the bench, which was good, because she was signing up farms left and right for leftover produce donations to the local homeless shelter and she wasn’t used to the paperwork, even with a few interns helping out that Leia assigned her. She was saving for a car to do those runs to pick up vegetables in the evenings, Ben drove her in the meantime. 

There was a little TV and a stack of some of the movies they talked about but still hadn’t gotten to, propped up by a stool so she could watch while she worked. She always liked white noise when she worked with her hands. 

Sanded and shiny and nice. And made for her. Not bought. 

This was set up for her. Her space. It had been empty and waiting for her to come home. Something physical and permanent and real. The people that loved her showing her that she belonged. 

The tears were back, her hand over her mouth. Ben came up behind her, his chin resting on the top of her head. 

“You need a place of your own to go to think. It was Dad’s idea. But I just wanted to see your reaction.”

She spun into his chest, indignant at her own tears, but he squeezed more out of her when his arms came around her tight. Han was watching from the garage door. This as the first time she really felt like she made him happy by just existing. Chewie was bouncing around their legs like he totally understood why they were acting like this. 

They did this for her. It was her stuff, her place. They welcomed her home.

Her Solos. Her boys. Her family.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew. God was this draining to write. This story, in many ways, was a fantasy of mine because it had so much of reality in it. And now it's over! I know there are a lot of stories I've started in the last few months, but this is the one I'm actually really proud to *finish* first because it felt the most like a chosen family with my readers and the process of writing it. Thank you for being patient, I know I've taken explained and unexplained hiatuses, and I owe so much to the chances you've given me and the loyalty you've shown. Thanks to everyone who comments and makes my day, and I hope you found a place you belonged for even a moment because I want you all to have the home that you and Ben and Rey deserve. 
> 
> Much love,  
> Madeleine


	7. epilogue

To his endless amusement: Rey was immensely satisfied that she worked with an ax for a living.

_ Seasonally.  _

The chainsaw she also got to use was in season as well, and she was pretty proud of that one too. 

She’d clomp into the house after sundown, strutting broad-chested-ly like Paul Bunyan, flexing her arm muscles in her flannel and thermal underneath with her cheeks pink from the cold and her eyes sparkling. 

Han could drum up some enthusiasm upon her entrance to the home, shouting  _ “The Lumberjack!” _ until Chewie nearly lost his mind over all the tree smells on her, but the excitement was for her, not for shared satisfaction that the Solo Household Ward was gainfully employed selling Christmas trees.

Ben loved it. 

He loved that time of night. Tossing his keys on the counter after driving her home, her mood boisterous and a little too loud because she could finally speak frankly without the “customer service” voice. Removing his coat while she ate a pre-dinner snack, the heavy lifting and being on her feet and the hours keeping her lean and in constant need of feeding. Watching her settle into the kitchen, where his father was usually waiting, and having everything in the house make sense because she was back in it.

It felt like the only time his life mattered. In picking her up from work, gliding through a blackout of December evening. Eating dinner with her half asleep at the table. Kissing her in bed until she shoved him away with an exhausted groan. 

He loved her calloused hands, her shivery laughter, the way she could observe both the bleak and the beautiful during her day at work and then slap them together for a story about the people she met on the job that you didn’t know whether to laugh of to cry over. Crazy customer service stories from the girl with the ax. Unbroken by pettiness; by holiday hostility making women bitchy and men aggressive, or the other way around. 

Rey was patient and good-natured, one had to be to put up with all of his shit, and somehow the very absurd almost impossible job she was doing seemed to be the best fit for her. 

It was a little too wintery for his taste, the Christmas Tree Farm, but she had contacts all over in the agriculture field in this county and her produce initiative, with Leia’s backing, had volunteer drivers in place for the surplus produce running shipments all over the state starting in Spring. 

Rey’s ambitions were always pretty humble; this was a project she wanted to see through but also didn’t want to be defined by Leia’s influence. Ben encouraged the day job.

She was young. She did something  _ amazing  _ already. And she had threatened both of her boys if they were to expect her to sit around the house or the garage all day for the rest of her life; she would leave them.

So to do something, to get out of the house, Rey was traipsing around a twinkle-light-illuminated lot of pine trees with a bunch of suburbanites haggling over douglas fir. With an ax.

And Rey was breathlessly happy. 

It was contagious. 

“You’re ridiculous,” he tried to tell her one evening when she flopped into his bed to rest her eyes before dinner, his hands snagging in the tree sap that was always in her hair these days. 

She shrugged, laughing, pulling his book out of his hands and snuggling into his chest. She was dressed in one of his sweaters, looking impossibly sweet while drowning in it, and the moment was almost perfect-

He tried to hide his sour expression at the Christmas music wafting upstairs from the kitchen, and from her humming softly along.

He  _ was _ happy to see her like this; just juxtaposed with frustration. Not at her. Just himself, the world, maybe at anything that wasn’t him that made her so joyful. There was the obvious sensation that had always made him resistant to change. Rey had a life of her own and her independence was important. She was also the only thing keeping him sane half the time, or keeping him and his father from killing each other. 

The only problem was he missed her.

And the constant, nagging paranoia that if Rey had her fair shot of life experiences; she would not need this hopeless, broken person and would find someone better for her.

But then there was the logical side of things kicking at Ben; Rey was a lot younger than him, she needed space to grow into her own person, otherwise he’d be intentionally holding her back and then what kind of fucking monster would he be?

“Han has stories,” she sighed when he rubbed her back: her shoulders were always really tensed up after cutting down and carrying trees all day and Ben gave a damn about how she felt when she got home. He wanted her to always come back, “When he talks about when he was my age. Just falling from place to place; weird job here, this one summer doing this, something completely different for two years in a new place. It’s kind of...romantic, to me. To just be anything for a little while.”

He tugged a pine needle out of her knot of hair. She shrugged sheepishly as he swiped it over her nose. He’d tried to instill a rule about getting those in their bed. It was impossible not to.

Thanksgiving felt like yesterday and his entire room already reeked of conifer.

Case and point: Ben was never a Christmas guy. He wasn’t even an obligatory Hanukkah guy either, despite Leia making it a holiday staple to at least  _ pretend _ it was a holiday staple for one out of the eight nights early on in her political career. He was raised by a household of mixed ideals that didn’t impose a lot  _ -at least of religion- _ on him. December was for cloying attempts to pretend everything was fine through the commercial aspects of the Holidays: but there was always something rotten underneath the scent of pine.

Whereas Rey loved all of it 

He kissed her ear; flushed red and still cold from the outside.

“So you’re a lumberjack, for a little while?”

She pressed her icy face against his neck, laughing. “I’m getting  _ ripped.” _

Then she squeezed him tight as though he’d  _ pop _ from her super strength.

She was incredibly satisfied with herself. He pulled her closer. She wasn’t close enough, these days, despite his father choosing to ignore the whole bed situation-

_ -as in Ben buying an entirely new, big-enough-for-two-people bed and setting it up in his room situation- _

-and having her here for keeps: his days weren’t as full of  _ Rey _ as they were in the summer, and the entire Christmas tangle was a reminder that she was out in the world and gift-wrapped crap was filling up valuable real estate in the brain he most wanted to occupy.

Ben was a selfish bastard, but he never pretended otherwise.

“Like Lizzie Borden?”

_ “Hmmm,” _ she shook her head, nuzzling him. Her tone was drippy and faux-impressed and he wanted to fuck the mouth that formed such a ripe attitude with him, “you’re  _ so _ much smarter than me. You’re so much  _ cooler _ than me. I don’t even  _ know _ who that is.”

He snuggled Rey into his arms anyway.

A new Rey; industrious, friendly,  _ busy. _

He was so fucking  _ greedy _ for her: he had just gotten her back, and here she was, bragging about getting more hours like she needed to work for a damn minute when she lived under this roof. 

She rolled away from him. Just enough to breathe. 

“Okay, Scrooge,” she murmured, her body slowly warmer and her expression soft. He snorted at  _ her _ reference; she had seen A Christmas Carol for the first time three days ago, and it starred  _ Muppets. _

Her expression was drawn and pensive. “I don’t know what to get you for Christmas.”

He drew her hand to the fly of his jeans.

“Exactly what I want from you is free, you know, and you can give it to me right now if you want-”

“Dinner’s almost ready,” she hissed breathily, laughing as he rolled on top of her anyway. Her fingers would stick on his skin from the sap still on them, but otherwise, this was the best part of his day.

Chewie was happy with the New Rey. Han was supportive. Ben was happy to see her happy. 

But fucking greedy.

 

* * *

 

_ “Unh…” _

“Rey,  _ quiet, _ please.”

She buried her face in the pillow as his hands worked her over. 

There was a high pitched cry mere seconds later. 

_ “Han is going to freak out.” _

She shook her head, her hands tensing in their grip on the pillow, but when his thumbs carefully worked into  _ that _ spot-

_ “Ohhh…” _

She sounded pained, but mostly loud, and obscene to the point that even Han couldn’t pretend he didn’t hear them:

_ “For the love of God you two shut the damn door…” _

Ben yanked Rey’s shirt down to cover her bare back, growling. He shouted loud enough to be heard through the walls:

“I swear that I am not hurting her _or_ fucking her.”

_ “Ben.” _

She nudged him aside, revealing herself to be fully dressed and pretty reasonably decent in the doorway of their room. “My shoulders are fucked up, he was giving me a back rub. Sorry Han.”

“It was the least sexy thing that has ever gone on under your roof, I promise,” Ben added, and she shot him a cold look.

“Whatever it is, shut the door. She sounds like she’s dying.”

Rey closed the door, rolling her sore shoulders, and Ben watched from the bed, thoughtful. 

“Maybe you should cut back your hours a little bit.”

“I, uh, actually asked for more yesterday,” she climbed on to the bed, putting her hands on his knee. 

“Why?”

She pursed her lips, “I mean, it’s money, right?”

Her tone was too casual, but she was tired, and she was _here;_ so he wasn't ruining it by pushing it. 

Much.

“But you’re never here,” he knew he was whining, but she shook it off.

“What’s the best Christmas gift you ever got?”

He lifted his shoulders in a useless shrug.

“Ben,” her eyes rolled dramatically,  _ “come on. _ Give me something to work with.”

“One year I got sick and I didn’t have to go to the Governor's Holiday party with my mom. Best gift anyone ever gave me.”

“What about the motorcycle?”

Rey had an attachment to Solo family myth; something she would whip out at random and utterly shut down his brain function. She had no context to these facts; when they were heavily tinged with emotions for him.

Still, he had to work hard not to flinch.

_ “Birthday,” _ he whispered with his voice all raspy. “Not Christmas.”

Rey laid down on the bed, her eyes shut.

“I still don’t know what to get you,” she admitted, tentatively, like a defeat.

He rested himself beside her. “Don’t worry about it.” 

“It  _ matters _ to me.”

He stared up at the ceiling of childhood bedroom. What a different place it was when she was living there too.

“Just let it be anything you don’t mind getting sold for drugs.”

Her face fell.

Clearly, even when it was what he wanted, she was not ready to joke about this. Not amongst the wreckage she was excavating through.

“Is that what happened to the bike?”

He nodded, his throat tight, at the sad look in her eyes.

She moaned pathetically.

“Don’t talk about yourself like that,” she pressed her mouth to his upper arm, the closest part of him to her face, and kissed him through his flannel shirt. “And don’t sell my present for drugs.”

“I wouldn’t,” he relented, wrapping an arm around her. “I’m just being a dick. Sorry.”

She played with the necklace he gave her, heavier with the recent addition of a charm that was shaped like a key. It jangled softly against the wrench.

Wrench, key; and now he had an ax charm picked out for her Christmas gift.

“You’re good at picking presents,” she huffed, resting her head on the pillow. He suppressed an internal relief that she was affectionately touching two of his previous gifts when she thought about that. “I feel hopeless at it. I don’t know what stuff is good. I never had  _ stuff.” _

“I’ll love anything you could get me.”

It was the honest answer. Just not a very good one. This season was very geared towards making her comfortable with the excess of holidays; her frustration of  _ the nerve of some people _ throwing fits on the lot at work having to be balanced with getting her to care about spending hours getting lights up on the porch.

Rey was a good sport, genuinely excited as well, but it did feel like it was a delicate balance of either a painful reminder or blatantly showing off.

_ In this house, Leia would make twelve different varieties of Christmas cookies while you were starving on the street... _

He kissed her shoulder, dipping to mouth at her necklace, and daring the plunge between her décolletage. She shivered, but was otherwise unresponsive. Too tired, he suspected, as she often was these days. 

She sighed, sleepily cradling him to her breast.

“Going to fall asleep on me?”

“Probably,” Rey didn’t even open her eyes to say it. She wasn’t even sorry; instead nestling into the blankets like she was staking a claim. He’d introduced her to flannel sheets when the weather changed and that had done more to get her in his bed than any seduction ever could.

He withheld his grumbling, instead taking a small amount of pleasure from the warmth of their bodies in a snug cocoon. She was out in seconds.

He was so grateful she was here. 

But that didn’t stop him from missing her.

 

* * *

 

_ “Ben?” _

He heard the voice from the attic.

She was probably needing help with  _ another _ box of decorations. 

The ornaments have been a production this year. His father probably hadn’t bothered taking them out in a long time, maybe since he had last been home, but Rey’s presence kick-started some need to make this holiday important. They were all pretending the effort was normal for her sake. One could hardly sneer at that effort; Ben didn’t even want to probe into her experience with special occasions and the state of her Christmas memories could probably devastate him to the point that he’d never be able to let her leave his bed.

He was trying not to sulk around the house about how she was spending her rare day off up in the attic digging through boxes instead of with him. 

He found himself at the base of the ladder at the first sound of her voice.

“Hmm?”

“Can you come up here?”

He was hardly going to say no when her tone was as curious as that.

As a taller statured man, ladders were an odd act of folding himself in half and crawling, so he struggled more than he wanted to admit with awkward knees. He finally poked his head into the attic to find her on the floor, digging through a box. Hunks of plastic littered the space around her. 

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” she was staring intently at an action figure in her hands, arms hefted above the helmet of a superhero: a position of in-flight. “Come and talk to me.”

Suspicious, but ever-obliging, he crawled towards her on his knees. The ceiling was low, he had to. He seated himself behind her, his legs open around her hips, as she fiddled with the toy. 

“Tell me about these,” she tilted her head as he sniffed her hair, intent on talking about other things, but she seemed pretty fixated. 

He grunted in a bored tone. 

“That guy has see-through vision. He can even see what’s under people’s clothes. Let’s test that superpower out on-”

She elbowed him, but leaned back to rest against his chest anyway. She fiddled with the arms of the toy. 

“Which one was your favorite?”

He glanced around the ones she’d placed on the floor, then turned his head and dug a hand through the box by her side. He knew, instinctively, what details to look for; the exact color and shape. But what he withdrew,  _ he knew it was what he meant to find,  _ but was marked by age and even somewhat…

It was brighter in his memory. More perfect. 

In his hand, he could see some factory defects of a cheap children’s toy. Raised letters from the manufacturer on the back ruining the illusion of pretend.The details that weren’t as refined as his memory filed them down to be; sloppy facial features, years of use scratching the paint and wearing down the lines.

He found himself speechless a moment, until drawing the figure in front of Rey, hovering it in front of her face. Because it wasn’t as...good, he supposed. 

As he remembered; even uncaringly. 

He could feel her smile. 

“He looks mean,” she tapped the broad chest. 

“It’s all the martial arts. There was this show...” 

He swallowed. 

Sometimes, he could even surprise himself with how shockingly lucky he was in getting out of the worst of his addiction. Of all things  _ lucky; _ because it could have been so much worse and he was doing pretty well considering. It was almost because he had an addictive personality  _ -compulsive even at a young age- _ and drugs were a phase of that before he moved on to something less destructive. 

That being Rey.

Super fucking lucky.

And sometimes, like now, he realized that he wasn’t just some weirdly wired guy who could jump from cocaine to Rey to maybe someday online poker. 

The substance abuse was an eclipsing problem. He was still an addict. And the drugs still took a whole lot from him. 

Scrambling his brain permanently. 

He couldn’t remember the name of the fucking show and he had watched it for years growing up.

Rey waited patiently.

“...Saturday mornings. He was given a tragic backstory in a later season. He was always brooding and one-dimensionally evil, and they did this flashback episode. Gave him a love interest and killed her off within ten minutes to show why he was so evil. I didn’t... _ no one did, probably, _ want to see why he wanted to destroy the whole group.  _ Group of martial artists,” _ he clarified, talking more than he meant to by the point Rey’s head dropped back to rest on his shoulder as he spoke. “But they wrote in this episode where it was all because he lost someone and then lost his way. And then never mentioned her again. It wasn’t a great show, but I watched it every Saturday morning.”

“And then errands,” Rey seemed to be in a dream, her voice so soft. 

Like she was trying to absorb his childhood through osmosis. 

He cleared his throat. 

_ “Sunday,” _ he choked out. “Soccer games and errands on Sunday.”

“Right,” she nodded against his chest. 

He pulled her so close, like he wanted her to be absorbed too.

“It wasn’t a very good show.”

It wasn’t a very good childhood. 

She shrugged. “But you cared about it then, right? You still have these.”

_ “Han _ still has these,” he looked nervously at the box. He hadn’t thought much about the show or his childhood or the action figure he snuck out of the bin every night to play with by the light of a flashlight when he was supposed to be asleep. “Rey, you can’t re-cast everything as good, you know that?”

She shook her head, cupping her hand over his. “I’m not trying to, Ben. I’m just trying to see it how it was instead of ignoring it.”

_ “How was it.” _

His hand tightened over her belly.

He didn’t know where this voice was coming from, but it had made both of them silent and still. 

She swallowed, the same way she did when he was being a typical piece of shit. 

“Not good,” she answered faintly, “from what I choose to remember.”

_ “Uh-huh.” _

He pressed his brow into her shoulder, folding around her. Enclosing her. “Tell me more.”

Firmly, Rey shook her head.

Han knew more than him. This he knew. Something about what he was ready to handle. 

He didn't want to admit how much it pissed him off.

“It’s snowing,” she said finally, their eyes both moving to the only window in the attic, which was rippling with white light.

"It is," he said, too late for it to seem like a natural response. 

They sat watching to snow for a long time.

 

* * *

 

Rey held a catalog from her spot at the kitchen island, gesturing to a circled espresso machine in pointed silence.

He took a sip of the hot chocolate she had made him  _ -hers hardly even burned anymore- _ and nodded unconvincingly. “Yeah. I like it.”

Rey groaned, dropping the catalog in a rustle of pages and pressing her head to the kitchen counter.

Han snorted from his seat that the table. “Just put her out of her misery and ask for a gift card.”

“Is that what _you_ did?”

Which actually would have been smart, Han could find more for himself at Home Depot that he’d love than anyone else on the planet could for him at the exact same store. Ben should have thought of that years ago.

“Nope,” Han smiled into his mug. “She asked me what I wanted. I need an expansion for my saw. We went to Home Depot, picked out the right one, had it gift wrapped and in the car in an hour. Can’t wait to open it. It’s exactly what I wanted.”

Ben leaned back in his chair, looking at her as carefully as possible. She was like a little kid offering a crayon drawing, he couldn’t help but pat her head and try and make her feel special. Patronizing as it was.

“It’s no pressure, Rey. We love you. Just your presence is a gift.”

She made a noise that indicated a swift death if he kept speaking.

“Nice pun,” Han added, “but no dice. Give her something to work with, because just asking for world peace isn’t cutting it, Miss America.”

“You can’t help her out with this? Take her to the mall and you can have this over in two hours.”

Rey had lifted her head from the table at this point, but it was like her annoyance -her attention in its entirety-  _ evacuated _ the room after he said that. 

Instead she stared straight ahead at the snow in the yard, her eyes glazed over.

Han hadn’t given him a certain look in a long time. 

The night Rey ran away, the morning he came home from rehab, the night in the hospital after the accident. Ben knew in his heart those were times he had truly fucked up, but it was at least rare.

Han was giving it now.

 

* * *

 

The holidays used to make him drink like fuck.

His parents too. When they were as socially lubricated -sloppy- as they were, even their teenage son sneaking more than the “special treat” glass of champagne that spread to a healthy tolerance year-round went unnoticed. 

His parents drank so much and communicated so little that empty bottles were normal, unremarked upon, and cyclically replaced. They were probably secretly suspicious of their partner’s drinking habits, but knowing their own, kept silent.

Ben had a healthy relationship with secrecy, his own preferences for his dad’s hard liquor but making do with Leia’s routine white wine in a pinch. 

The holidays, even after he left home, with their typical malaise, always made him swan-dive into his habits. The compulsions were worse. The soothing tic of it more frequent, needing it in shorter and shorter bursts, until he had friends waking him up by kicking the mattress in his filthy apartment demanding money he owed them.

It was almost too easy to get himself into trouble this time of year.

His worst habit -his fucking mouth- seemed to do the trick this year.

Rey had quietly excused herself for a nap after the conversation about his gift.

“She’s working herself to the bone,” Ben said warily as she tiptoed up the stairs. Watching her bad knee bend always made something dark in him coil like it was finally awake again. His tone implied it was Han’s fault, which isn’t  _ entirely _ true, but Ben had been doing his best to make Rey feel welcome and something wasn’t clicking for her to take it easy on herself, she was home.

Han grit his jaw.

Like his son was a fool and it wasn’t that easy.

There were moments -after flickering in and out of his father’s life- that Ben saw how much Han had aged in the last ten years. Not just the trauma to his back. But his face. His expressions.

“There are things about her you will never understand,” Han warned in a low tone, “things you are not ready to hear.”

Ben straightened his stance. “I know we’re going to give her a good Christmas. I don’t get why she’s so nervous about it.”

His tone was overly defensive, projecting him back in time to high school;

_ Where were you? Who were you with? _

And his father’s distrust still burned.

“You showed me the file.”

“I showed you  _ part _ of the file,” Han reasoned, his tone measured. More fatherly than he deserved. “What you were ready to see. But you weren’t exactly  _ nice _ when you moved back home, Ben, and I wasn’t going to hand you the ammo to hurt this kid. She’s been through enough.”

“What the hell do you mean?”

Ben thought it was pretty straightforward. Abandoned by parents who had been missing ever since. CPS checks to the house yielding no inhabitants. Running away from foster homes. Sleeping in a car until Han found her.

_ “Please handle what we’re telling you sensitively,”  _ Leia had ordered over a lunch of making jibes about his hair, his posture, and the past decade.

He remembered Rey’s voice, carrying up from the dining room the first night Han had gotten really drunk after she had returned for good:

_ “I love you, Han, but you need to  _ **_step the fuck up_ ** _ for your son.” _

Rey did not break Han’s habit. Even with her power, her capability. She did not break Ben’s. But the resistance she offered was, sometimes, enough to change course.

“Don’t leave me out of this,” Ben stared at his hands, which were clenched, but seizing and jumping because of old trauma, “I don’t want to hurt her.”

Han took a deep breath.

“I don’t want to do this to you, as a parent.”

There was a fatherly affection there that made him bristle. Even if he always wanted it to be there.

“I’m an adult,” Ben tightened his jaw. “And I’m doing this for her.”

 

* * *

 

Rey was asleep in their room when he entered. Curled up on top of the covers, totally out.

He could watch her sleep in his bed forever.

But right now, he was too needy.

Rey stirred a little bit when he crawled in to spoon behind her, holding a little tighter than necessary.

“Ben?”

Her voice was beautifully ragged from sleep. 

“Don’t wake up,” he ordered, because he didn’t know if even she was ready to see him like this. He wasn’t sure she was ready for him to see her like he had just seen her.

He also said it because it was a rare afternoon she wasn’t working and she needed the rest.

“I’m,” he felt his teeth bearing down on themselves, clenched to almost cracking, “I’m just going to kiss this sweet little neck, okay? Don’t wake up. Go to sleep.”

He pressed his lips to her nape, and she trembled, fists tightening in the blanket under her.

That open mouth sucking her skin could not salvage her moment of rest.

“Ben.”

She knew. 

She sensed the moment he was different. She knew what he had seen.

He slid his mouth down her throat, wetting her skin until she shivered. She wasn’t moving or breathing.

_ This person _ grew out of a lost little kid. Someone her parents didn’t want, miraculous thing that they had. The only person he wanted. 

He held her close, not letting her wriggle away.

“I love you.”

“Mhmm,” she sounded tired when she finally let go of the breath she was holding. “Okay, I’ll go back to sleep.”

He wanted to be strong and brave enough for her to curl into in this moment, but it was him clinging to her instead. He was cracking open, her soft hair against his face, her warm body pressed up to his.

Rey sighed after he left her in companionable silence so she could do just that.

“And I don’t want to fight about what you saw.”

_“Okay,”_  he sighed, there wasn’t really a plan to. Other than that she could have told him before now instead of Han showing him; which she obviously did not feel obligated to do, and her feelings, however cruelly he reacted to them, mattered. “What  _ do _ you want.”

There was a moment of sad trembling, but it was in the formation of soft, unkind laughter.

Unkind to herself.

“For you to say something inappropriate about how sexy I am.”

“I’ll always do that for you,”  he whispered, keeping her so close neither of them could breathe. His lips moved over her temple. 

“Hey Ben?”

She rolled over to face him.

There was a weird look on her face as she started unbuttoning her flannel. He sat back, not pouncing on her as instinct demanded. Her throat was bare, fluttering with her pulse, then her breastbone, her chest, the belly that had softened to decadent comfort with the access to better food she’d had in this house.

_ “If I fall asleep,” _ her eyes were already closed, as a warning.

He swallowed.  _ The fact that she felt the need to ask-  _

“I wouldn’t, I’ll stop, I promise-”

_“Keep going,”_ she urged, opening those sphynx-like eyes in a challenge. “Listen to me. I trust you. _You can keep going.”_

His hands clasped around her neck; not squeezing. But making her look at him.

“Oh my god,” he was on top of her in an instant. “Look at me.”

“Ben,” her voice was raspy, “I want to fall asleep with you inside me. Trust me. I want this.”

He helped her slide her clothes off in the gray light of a December afternoon, her feet heavy and useless from the hours in boots walking around the slush. She shivered when his hands ghosted over her skin.

“You’re not scared?”

She shook her head, her eyelids heavy. “I’m tired. But I wanna feel it.”

He hummed into the crook of her neck, pushing into her gently when she was all warmed up for him. It didn't take much. Just some kissing and the sense memory of their naked skin against each other.

“I love you,” she murmured. When either of them spoke; it was at a barely audible volume. It felt like part of the intimacy of a nap; comfortable, mindless, an overwhelming sensation slipping through their bodies and taking hold. 

Something easy to wake up from.

He wasn’t sure he was ready for this; her precious trust in him so open and available. It was overwhelming how easily she gave it.

She usually liked him rough; but he wasn’t going to do that to her this time. If she regretted a single mark when she was too sleepy to properly gauge their severity he wouldn’t be able to look her in the eye again.

So he thrust into her lazily, her hands moving up and down his spine, her breath fluttering against his neck.

“You gonna mark me up?” she teased, her words barely carrying on a breath, “Pull my hair? You gonna cover me in cum? Because you can.”

Rey seemed to like laying back on the mattress, snuggled deep in the sheets, with him moving over her. Her thighs open around his hips, but relaxed, her body so ready for him it feels like they rolled over in the middle of the night.

Her trust was fucking _smug_ about it. Like she was, bizarrely, flaunting power over him.

He shook his head.

He saw her lids flutter, her brow tense; she was not nearly as close to sleep as she was pretending to be, and it made him feel a little less alone in the massive liberty she just permitted from him. Soothed, he lowered his mouth to her nipple, dared a bite that stemmed from a suck and gave way to teeth. She yelped, clenching around him as he bit, and he sighed with relief. 

She liked this game. 

This wasn’t a  _ ‘not tonight, dear’ _ way of getting out of it. She seemed to want this lack of self under her own control. She wanted to let go.

And give it to him.

He had seen the ultimate piece of her broken heart, and she wanted him to lick the swelling down like a lion to its wounded cub.

Showing he wouldn’t take advantage. Showing her trust was warranted.

He slowed his thrusts to more of an experimental roll. She clung to him in response.

“Thought you were so tired,” he mumbled, nosing at her locked limbs. “Or is Rey a dirty girl in her sleep?”

She bit back an evil little smile, but her cunt clenched around him. Tight. Needy.

“Will you take care of your dirty girl?”

He held her thighs open and bore down, her body twitching around the intrusion.

_ “Yes,” _ he nodded, half her slave already, for this fucked up game to keep going. He wanted it to go on forever. 

"Or maybe you're just lazy," he teased, "and this is your way of getting me to do all the work."

"I am _super tired,"_ she laughed softly. "But I've been thinking lately about how it would feel waking up with you inside me. This is a good start."

He loved her more than he ever loved himself.

He kissed the soft skin under her ear, telling her as much, because if she was half-asleep, what did it matter to give himself away forever. She moaned, her arms around his neck, fingers in his hair.

He slid a thumb between her lips and teased her clit as he thrust inside carefully. Slow enough to feel every inch slip in and out. 

With that, she lay back, open and sprawled for him to look at while he moved. Perfect.

She was his home.

Her fingers danced along his lips. Those little hands. Once covered in pink mittens dragging towards the floor of a shopping mall. Wandering for hours. Waiting.

“I don’t like thinking of you  _ cold,” _ he kissed her mouth, not stopping his harsh intrusion until her lips worked back against his. She sighed, pecking at his lips.

_ Yes dear, I’m awake, please continue. _

“I don’t like thinking of you alone. Or scared.”

His arms shook from the place he is holding herself above her. The body she made helpless for him. The fan of her lashes across the swoop of her cheek bones.

She opened her eyes. Locked those legs around his waist. Fucking strong enough that he couldn't fight the coil of her body. Reminding him who was in control.

“I’m not scared.”

She didn’t look it either.

 

* * *

 

Later on, Rey was wearing his shirt, sprawled across their bed, while he rubbed her back. Gently, not enough to break up any knots, but enough to have her bonelessly puddled into the sheets.

“Thank you for being such a buzzkill when your girlfriend wants you to fuck her unconscious,” she teased without any hint of malice, her smile sharp but warm.

He shivered, his hand working a careful circle on her lower back.

“Figured I should keep the cigarette burns to a minimum.”

She was harder to phase than that:

“You really  _ do _ care.”

“Obviously,” He pinched her ass hard enough to get her to hiss. Now awake, she jerked, lively and responsive. “Sorry I was a buzzkill. It was hot as all hell; but I kept waiting for you to break out some traumatic story of some cold Christmas Eve spent on the streets…”

“Naw. That’s for when we try anal.”

“Rey,” he sighed it out, kissing the top of her head, and she laughed softly from her spot next to him, “you are  _ fucked up.” _

“And you love me this way.”

She rolled onto her back like a sleepy kitten. Working the crazy hours she did, she slept when she had the chance to, so her sleep schedule was wrecked. She was likely going to be up all night after the nap they took. Too messy in their sex to bother with moving. She got what she wanted, in a way, but all active sexual maneuvers occurred before they both passed out.

“I do, Angel,” he kissed the soft curve of her breast, slipping out of the shirt of his that she wore..

She was relatively calm for someone who just found out he had witnessed footage of the most traumatic event of her life. Ben was never sure she'd be over it. He could see her expressions on that little girl’s face. 

But what did she want to prove? 

That she trusted him anyway.

“Quit your stupid job,” he mumbled, touching her bare stomach. “Let’s find a place of our own. I’ll take care of you.”

She shook her head.

“Season’s almost over,” she bargained thoughtfully.

“Then take some time off. I miss you.”

“I know,” she took her turn to kiss him; pecking his shoulder. “But you can’t undo what was done by attending to every need I have. That’s how none of us move on.”

Rey gave him a meaningful look. What happened to her, it was too painful. She had gotten this far ignoring that part of her past. 

She was strong from that. But not so strong that she didn’t feel too fragile to face this now.

She turned her gaze to the neighbor’s Christmas lights. He caught her lifting her head to stare at them at all hours of the night.

With a soft sigh, he tickled her enough to make her squirm.

“Get dressed.”

They wandered down the suburban street at Eleven P.M on a weeknight like teenage hooligans.

Rey was smiling luminously, her eyes on all the lights.

He was colder than anything else, his breath puffing out of his mouth in a thick cloud. He remembered these streets, sneaking out at night as a teenager. Taking long walks to clear his head when he was in a black place.

The holidays were uncomfortable for him; like a wool hat that didn’t fit. He was constantly  _ itchy. _

Poor, patient Rey, waiting in the wings to soothe him.

“Let’s be really crazy,” she pitched her voice low, a conspiratorial whisper. He was sure she was trying to sound tempting, but she sounded more like a  _ “cool” _ aunt letting her nieces and nephews eat pancakes for dinner. “You can have anything in the world for Christmas. _Go!”_

She pointed at him, walking backwards down the street, silhouetted by red and green light.

His fists were balled up in his pockets.

“I know I’m not the best person.”

Her face fell. “Ben, you deserve-”

“Let me finish.” 

He cleared his throat, “I’m not, Rey. But If I could have anything in the world, it would be for you to know that I’m not going to abandon you like they did.”

“Ben,” she sounded soft and achy when her arms wound around his neck. Tonight had been the first time they had had sex in weeks; it had done both of them some good. Though it made him want to make her quit that day job and keep her around the house all the time.

But that wasn’t fair.

He couldn’t say this with her arms around him. He wasn’t strong enough.

“No matter where you go,” he swallowed, looking at the tar under his feet as he trudged along, “because you don’t have to stay if you don’t want to.”

What he wanted was to prove to himself he could, even after all this strange happiness.

Things were still the same, in their way. Tolerable. His father and him still gruff and distant. Han had cut back on drinking, he had cut back on the outbursts, and Rey the secrets. They had surpassed the end-of-summer high; winter kept the days crisply and tolerably short. Dinners were earlier. He had more time in bed with Rey; not having to smuggle her around the house to fuck. Not fucking her, lately, but time in bed was the closest thing that came to sacred for him.

Talking softly about their days. Smelling their shower-clean skin. Kissing until she moaned with her need to sleep; sated and warm and safe.

Rey pressed her lips together.

“I don’t have one foot out the door. I know you felt that way this summer. I know I...left. I’m not going to be your dad. I don’t want to run away. Not from you.”

She touched her hand to his face. He couldn’t flinch away when she swept her eyes across his scar. No matter how much it terrified him. What she could see from looking.

“How did you feel about today?”

She looked somewhere over his shoulder, her eyes fuzzing with pain.

“What your uncle dug up about me...it didn’t let me just be a person in this house for longer than I knew. I still fit, but I didn’t like learning I was here on pity. Han had at least let me enjoy that delusion."

She waved her hand to cover up the details.

“I didn’t know there was security footage of that day. That was  _ after _ I left. Han told me you weren’t ready to see it.”

“Han has warmed to the idea of tough love, apparently.”

Rey waited patiently for the annoyance to leave his face.

“Am I different to you now?”

“No.”

It was true. He would go into the future unable to change his love for her; so why would the past similarly alter it? He knew she had been abandoned, and seeing it had awoken an anger that was blinding him when he let his mind rest on the images fresh from this afternoon. But he could pull her close, bite the mittens off those fully-grown hands and kiss the calluses that she got from her ax work and see the necklace he gave her around her neck; he was familiar with her present and future on a physical level. 

“Then that’s all I want. Because that file...it proved what happened to me was real. Just as much as the crap in the attic, or the clues you left behind in your room, made a base for who you are now. It still _hurts_ me. But I...I spent so long convincing myself that my memories had changed what happened at that mall. The video didn't feel sinister. After I came to terms with it; it was strangely validating."

He tried to ease his dry throat with a swallow. It was too impossible.

She took his hand, shivering, and led him back towards the house.

 

* * *

 

The week of Christmas was pure chaos. 

“Rey,” Ben caught her elbow as she tried to hurry upstairs to grab the scarf she had forgotten, “you are running yourself ragged. Call in sick. Stay home.”

“Can’t,” she mumbled, extracting herself, “they need me.”

“They really don’t, at least not this much,” Han called from the kitchen. He wasn’t a big eavesdropper, so he must have really agreed with Ben on this one.

“It is Christmas Eve,” she whined, her boots digging into the floor. “Do you know how many old-school families decorate their tree on Christmas Eve?”

“Not since prohibition, young lady,” Han’s mouth was a firm line. “Ben’s picking you up at five. Are we clear?”

“I can’t believe you’re  _ begging _ to go to work. Do you hate us or something?”

Rey’s face flickered with a pained expression. “Of course not. You’re my boys.”

She kissed his cheek, scooping up her winter coat in her arms. “Ben, I’m going to be late, and they need all the help they can get.”

She was the only worker there, when he dropped her off, who didn’t live on the family farm the trees were grown on. So her excuse was unlikely.

He felt weird about this entire situation, like she had chosen a new family. Her talk of permanence, of home, was always undercut by this mad-grab for more hours. Rey did not rack up a whole lot of expenses. Without alcohol, their dates were so cheap that either person could cover the price of a meal without arguing over who covered last time.

The uneasy feeling sank in his gut as he drove the way home. And that uneasy feeling…

There was a fear in him from his place in the driver’s seat. 

He could go anywhere.

It didn’t matter what kind of person he was. He was an addict; that was already two people sharing his head, and one of them could not be reasoned with. 

He would always be an addict. 

But this was one day; one more day with Rey down, he could get through this day without destroying everything.

He drove home, biting his tongue until it bled until he was safely parked in the driveway.

 

* * *

 

Rey was wiped out when he picked her up, she fell into the passenger side so limply he thought she fainted for a moment. It was only when she faintly hummed to ‘Frosty the Snowman” on the loudspeakers around the farm stand did he realize she was conscious.

“You okay, babe?”

“Yeah,” she drawled. 

She wasn’t looking at him.

“Okay,” he hedged, starting the car.

His afternoon had sucked. He had sought out his father and all but said  _ “I may break my sobriety if you don’t give me, my neurosis, and all this anxiety something to do  _ **_stat_ ** _ ” _ so he spent the afternoon taking the screens down off the porch, adding extra lights to the roof, and baking some semblance of cookies.

Rey rolled her head towards him, her cheeks flushed pink from the cold.

“Tell me about your favorite Christmas.”

He exhaled deeply. This prodding was clearly her trying to get him to admit it; he hated this fucking holiday and he was trying to be nice about her enthusiasm.

“There was one night it was this huge Christmas brunch my mom was throwing. So many people, it felt like the foundation of the house was shaking. I hated these parties; I had to be nice to everyone and every kid my age hated me. I was miserable. This one little shit, son of my mom’s biggest donor...I won’t get into it. Han catches me at my full-on meltdown point. Tells me to get my jacket. We went to a dive a few miles away. I ate mozzarella sticks. He had a few beers. Then we went home and no one was the wiser.”

Rey was silent, watching the Christmas lights decorating the passing houses.

“Did Leia know?”

“Yeah, but she hid it well.”

Rey took a deep breath. “Do you think it had something to do with him sneaking away to drink?”

“With booze at the house already?”

She had a point; nothing was really stronger than champagne.

He cut her a smug look, but it dropped of his face. “Without witnesses, you mean.”

“Yeah.”

“And I was helping  _ hide it.” _

The memory isn’t his favorite, she wasn’t  _ ruining _ it, it felt like a rare moment in his childhood where his father was on his side. That could still be true. 

That could still be them bonding, and still toxic. He could be a charismatic guy who bailed Ben out of a sticky situation and an alcoholic and a father.

Rey’s perception of both Solo men was built carefully; piece by piece. She never dismissed new information. She just examined thoroughly and tried to withhold judgement. Tried to steer the course to prevent history from repeating itself.

These things about his father could still be true and still be a way to undercut something important to Leia and a way to rope his son in as a prop to hide his drinking.

Rey secured the suspicion:

“He would do the same thing with me, during errands. We’d get lunch at this dives where everyone knew him seemingly intimately. We’d sit in the bar, no one would blink at me being there. Two in the afternoon, he’d order a beer. I just thought that was what adults do,” Rey shrugged. “I didn’t think it was weird.”

His throat swelled shut for a second. He had always hoped that Han was a better father the second time around, with his chosen child.

But there was something validating in finding out it wasn't just him.

“Yeah,” he held his breath as he rounded a turn, “It was the same way growing up. Sunday errands after soccer. We’d cross counties looking for auto parts, then we’d get lunch. I’d get to order whatever crap my mom wouldn’t let me eat in the house. I didn’t know kids couldn’t sit at the bar until I was an adult. I was raised...I was always there. I was his son and his son was always welcome. It felt normal.”

“Did these same people…”

_ “Yeah.” _

He hadn’t really put that thought into action; he just thought he was a really tough, adult-looking 17 year old who those same places happened to serve alcohol to at the time.

“I’m sorry,” she mumbled, “I didn’t ask you to do this to something happy…”

It was a moment, as a kid, when he felt good.

And her examination, and his reflection, could not take it away from child Ben.

But looking at it this way made Ben a better adult.

“It was fucked up. But in the moment, it made me happy.”

He looked sidelong at her.

This was Han and Ben. 

He didn’t hate Han, even with his age adding something cold and assessing to these memories. It just was what it was. They were in a better place; Ben sober, Han, since Rey’s chastisement, closer than ever. 

All you can ask for was sometimes more meaningful than whatever you  _ could _ ask for.

The past was complicated. Keeping it alive this way mattered.

 

* * *

 

“Why do you look so worried?”

Next to him, Rey flinched, her face pale, but she smiled bravely. 

_ “I wasn’t very good this year,” _ she whispered to Ben, as Han growled-

_“I didn’t hear that-”_ from the other side of the rec room. 

The movie started, and the three fell into silence. Chewie’s head was on her lap, a giant red bow around his neck, and Rey scratched his head, unable to lift her face. 

Holiday sentimentality, from movies he’d already seen 20+ times, always made his stomach churn and his anxious brain start wheeling like a hamster in a cage. But Rey was one worse for him tonight.

She had her hands tensed like claws, and when there was that warm, glowing,  _ ‘maybe Christmastime is really about- _ ” moment where the music swelled; she started to  _ weep. _

Han turned to comment that the movie wasn’t even  _ that _ good, to tease their soft-hearted girl, but Ben shot his a frantic look. 

She hadn’t even been watching the movie.

“Rey?”

He put his arm around her shoulders. She was shuddering, hands over her face. “Rey, talk to me. What’s wrong?”

“I just...you two have done so much for me, and I...I wanted to get you something good. I did. I just…”

She was hiccuping, her entire face red. Ben had seen her like this once or twice before; where her problems felt so massive she couldn’t help trivialize them by crying like a toddler being denied ice cream.

If his heart wasn’t breaking for how unfair the world had already been for her, it would just seem like ice cream. But she’d been denied more than that, so if it was that; he’d kill a man and ask if she wanted sprinkles.

“You did get me something good,” Han patted her shoulder from the other side. It sucked that Han was not a better father to him; but frankly Ben would give that up for Rey to get the father he was trying to be  _ now. _ “Exactly what I asked for. And I would have settled for a gift card, Rey, you worked hard for that present. You didn’t have to, but you did. I know that.”

Ben couldn’t brace himself for that gut-punch.

Those crazy hours, her exhaustion; it had all been for goddamn Christmas presents.

He found himself on his knees in front of her, trying to get her to meet his eyes.

“Rey, if it’s from you, I’ll love it. You didn’t need to go to any lengths to get me to love a part of you.”

He hadn’t dropped the “L” word often in front of Han. In this situation; fuck that. She could get him to agree to anything in front of Han at this moment.

“You don’t need to prove you deserve to be here. We want you here. You didn’t have to try and earn it.”

She looked at him between her fingers.

“I’m  _ really _ tired,” she laughed out, seizing with sobs, and for a room with so much testosterone there was an awful lot of not knowing what to do about the state she was in. Laughing, crying, lamenting, Chewie still zonked out on her lap.

“Rey,” he took her hands gently. “If you’re okay; can we get you to sleep? We can do Christmas tomorrow.”

She nodded, her eyes full. “I’m okay,” she sniffled, breathing heavily. “I’m really, really nervous about your presents. And I’m tired. And I can’t feel my toes.”

“Maybe you felt like working your ass off and making some money would make you feel more... _level?”_

She nodded sheepishly. 

Han sighed. “Kid, if you needed money-”

“I don’t need  _ your _ money,” she wiped her eyes with the heel of her hand roughly. “I needed  _ mine. _ For you two.”

Ben withheld the obvious response;  _ goddamnit, Rey, you pure-hearted disaster. _

“I’ll take this,” he told his father, and Han got up to unplug the tree. 

Odd how Leia’s pristine sitting room sat untouched, and this was the room they had decorated for Christmas. Maybe because they actually used this room.

Ben heaved Rey over his shoulder, despite her protests, and carried her slung there to their room.

“You perfect saint,” he whispered, with a beleaguered breath like she was just _oh-so-exhausting._ She couldn’t look at him after he set her down on the bed, “you little Christmas Angel.”

“I want you to like it.”

“Because these objects are an extension of you or something?”

He swept her hair out of her face. She nuzzled into his touch; her eyes very red.

“What am I going to do with you…?”

“Commit me,” she mumbled. Her expression was more embarrassed than hurt. Her insecurities were real; but she was obviously too tired to be awake and was trying to be a good sport about Han offering to watch a Christmas movie together. Hence the breakdown. It was too hard to keep those hovering thoughts from spiraling her down with them.

Did he know that feeling.

“I’m going to have to give you one of your presents early” he reasoned, like she was a child who needed a time-out. Or a spoonful of medicine, for _pretending_ to be sick to get to stay home from school and needing to learn her lesson.

“Don’t encourage me,” she laughed dryly, but he was already picking the box out of his desk drawer.

“You’re too far gone to make this my fault.”

The box under her nose was grabbed and ripped open. Her protests were mostly show.

The ax was for tomorrow; this charm was coin-sized. A silver cast of his thumbprint. 

She didn’t say anything.

Rey didn’t have to. 

She just unclasped her necklace, kissed the imprint of his thumb, and slipped it through the chain to settle at her heart.

A wrench, and key, and a piece of himself.

 

* * *

 

Christmas morning was  _ sugar; _ it always had been. Cookies layered in staying up all night from excitement and hot chocolate and adrenaline. 

It made him incredibly nervous to have Rey in his bed.

There was about six hours of solid rest; then he felt her tossing and turning. 

He had been awake for most of this to begin with, but he felt her wake up next to him and try to hide it. But he knew her body when it was excited.

"I thought you were tired..."

"Hmm," her hands slipped down the front of his sweatpants, "I thought I didn't give you enough attention..."

“If you’re not careful,” he sighed against her lips as her naughty hands pulled his tee shirt up to skate over his ribs, “Santa won’t come.”

_ “C’mere, Santa,” _ she panted, her back arching temptingly,  _ “I’ve been a very bad girl.” _

 

* * *

 

There were so many presents under the tree even Ben, in his jaded adulthood, felt overwhelmed. 

He knew what paper his father had used. This was…

“Rey,” he hugged her from behind, Han bringing mugs of coffee in from the kitchen. His chin rested on the top of her head. She was trembling with excitement. “This is way too much.”

She huffed defensively, but he could feel her relief of  _ overdoing _ things; “I don’t know what’s _normal_ for this.”

There were a few quick breakfast items on a large platter; bacon and muffins and Christmas cookies, that they set down out of Chewie’s reach and lazily went about opening presents as they picked at the food. 

Rey loved her silver ax; though her giddiness paled to the sweet surprise of his thumbprint. 

She’d rather have that always touching her skin.

Rey had good taste when it came to both of them, but at the end of the day, it was stuff. It felt better to have the surprised of someone guessing for him, accurately, what he'd like than fulfilling a wish list. 

She seemed more eager to have him open one box, coyly skating around it in the beginning of the gift exchange to save it for a certain time.

It was heavy in his lap, startling him, when she placed it there. Looking readily up at him from her seat on the floor.

Her excitement was enough to make his heart pound with excitement in a way he hadn’t felt since childhood.

“It’s kind of dumb,” Rey sat back, looking sweetly guilty.

But oh-so-pleased with herself.

He raised his eyebrow at her, holding the wrapped box in his hands.  _ “Just what I’ve always wanted.” _

She rolled her eyes. “Just open it.”

But this ease, this comfort, she seemed to get that this wasn’t so life and death. Last night was a product of exhaustion, that Christmas mania women get, and the recent viewing of her childhood trauma.

He loved her so much, smiling and going on anyway on the floor at his feet. 

What he opened looks like an ant farm at first. Glass box in a wooden frame. It looked like it could be mounted on the wall or propped up on a desk. 

It was a shadowbox filled with black sand, enough for the contents to shift around to reveal…

An orange leg. A black-gloved fist.

The layers of sand moved depending on how he tilted it; so he could see a lot of things. A lot of smeared, familiar faces.

She’d preserved his actions figures.

The black made the colors stand out, abstracted the weird plastic features that, because of their cartoonish nature, never looked fully human. It made the eye focus on small detail, the way memory does.

It was the way to view them as an adult. It was a safe place to keep them. It was a way to keep them close before time changed his memory again.

She was watching his face carefully.

“I really... _ thank you.” _

“I felt like it was better than sitting in the attic,” her smile was small but thoroughly pleased, “The collector’s value-”

“These things were abused to shit, you weren’t going to get a dime off of them.”

He leaned down to kiss her, her hands on his knees. “Thank you. I love it.”

“Han helped.”

Han snorted. “It was her idea. The first few tries on that box didn’t go so smoothly, but she was fine on her own by the time we figured it out. It’s sealed tight; you can hang it if you want.”

It was a perfect gift because it meant she was at her workshop for hours; giving that space use. He knew she felt happy there. He was glad to hold even a part of that in his hands.

But it was also just a good gift.

Ben was tilting the box in his hands, watching the sand move; a kid playing with the present immediately instead of ripping open the next box. Like proud parents, Rey and Han let the festivities lapse for him to just examine the gift. There were other presents, especially from Rey, who had definitely gone a little overboard, to open. 

But those could wait.

Han leaned in to watch the hunks of plastic reveal and vanish under the rising and falling layers of sand. 

_ “Knights of Ren.” _

Ben’s mouth went dry.

“What?”

“Wasn’t that the show? You watched it every weekend. We took you to see the movie on your ninth birthday. I’d forgotten we had those things just lying around.”

“I didn’t think,” he uncovered a masked face, then dipped the box the other way so it was hidden back up, “I didn’t think you remembered.”

His father merely laughed in response to a figure even he recognized. 

He tapped the glass, making Ben’s shaky hands halt.

“Almost broke my goddamn ankle on this one trying to kiss you goodnight.”

Rey was crying now.

Maybe because he was too.

Han being Han, said nothing of this, as if the golden rule was crying was an accident until you made a sound. He leaned back in his chair, widening his legs to get comfortable;

“That was the Christmas your mother went through three different assistants; we never told you but one of them quit because your mother had her wait in line for that first wave of them to be released at the mall because you wanted them so badly. It was all we heard about. Leia looks at me one night and says  _ ‘we’d better get him these action figures or we’ll never know peace again’ _ so I ended up picking them up a few cities over. Took three malls, but I fared better than that assistant. She was a sensitive thing, very shaken by the crowds. Her resignation letter was lovely. I framed it for Leia in time for her gift that year.”

The story, as Han told it, was funny. It was a lot of things. It was warm and happy and mean and sad too. It made him feel better about that time. It made him ache.

But Han told him this to make him laugh, and he found himself doing that most of all. Because it could be all of those things. 

Rey was right. Memories weren’t one thing. They would always shift depending on how you looked at it. They were hard to trust, unless you were brave enough to try and fully understand their role as a part of you.

With Rey next to him, his future felt solid and clear.

But the past should still be preserved to understand himself. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wanted to reward some of my more long-term readers with this chapter; but welcome ESA newbies!
> 
> Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all of my readers; you have done so much for me this year. I hope this felt like I gave something back.
> 
> I love you-
> 
> Madeleine

**Author's Note:**

> I know I need to stop using Lorde lyrics I'm just SO BAD at titles. Come find me at secretreylotrash if you want to get weird.
> 
> Also: The ambiguously unprotected sex in this chapter will be addressed in a later chapter, I'm not *ignoring* it and I'm not getting them pregnant, they will have a frank discussion about birth control methods after they have a brief Plan-B Panic Attack outside a CVS. That scene is already written, it will be a part of Chapter 2.


End file.
